Chapter Text
It is the rain that wakes him.
Rapid fat drops of rain that are falling in an icy torrent, soaking into Shen Yuan’s body as if they’re trying to pierce directly into his soul and he gasps at the suddenness of it. Eyes flying open and a strange high pitched noise ripping through his throat.
Beside him — as if from a distance— he can hear a cheerfully beep! Followed by a voice that sounds almost like the Google lady that reads everything out in monotone.
[ Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Successful transmigration into — Proud Immortal Demon Way — and soul anchoring! User Shen Yuan has successfully been bound into the role of Disciple Hao Wang! This System hopes to be of use during trying times! ]
Shen Yuan groans, but it sounds wrong, pulses awkwardly in his throat as a strange rumble that ripples down into his chest and trails back off into a high pitched animalistic noise.
He can barely focus, mind spinning almost frantically. Catching the words transmigration and disciple , but mostly sidetracked by the sudden tight bolt of pure agony that rips down his side as he shifts his arm. Immediately a strangled noise escapes him and his eyes fly fully open in shock.
He’s lying on pavement; it’s raining, the sound of it is near thunderous in his strangely sensitive ears, and he can see a strangely blurry pitch black alleyway around him. It doesn’t make any sense. The last thing he remembers he was reading the last chapter of that stupid fucking novel and — and he doesn’t know where he is!
Now that he’s aware of it, pain is radiating in waves over his entire body, mostly focused on a strip of skin along his side that wraps down over his stomach. Another horrible pained noise rips from his throat and he barely registers his hind foot kicking out against the cobblestone beneath him, claws scraping against the street and jostling his body. Causing him to yelp loudly as if he’s an animal at the near sickening jolt of pain that radiates from the movement.
Where am I?! The thought is half desperate, half panicked. He feels like he should be vomiting or even passing out; Shen Yuan had been through a lot in his life but nothing quite like this .
There’s another soft beep! And then a small box that looks kind of like an online chat forum crossed with a rpg game menu screen —
[ answering User! User has successfully transmigrated into The world of Proud Immortal Demon Way as Disciple Hao Wang! This system is currently experiencing a power shortage due to lack of exposure to the power source and wishes the user the best of luck while it goes into sleep mode until power source is located! ]
There’s another beep! and Shen Yuan can only gape at the space that’s left behind, mind too foggy to really understand what’s going on; he processes the words agonizingly slowly.
Transmigration. I’ve transmigrated. He nearly heaves again, but instead his breaths have entirely stopped. Into Proud immortal Demon Way?! That trash omegaverse novel?!
There’s a split second where all he can feel, see, hear is the roaring sound of the icy rain clashing horribly with his sluggishly pounding heart and then his eyes are rolling back and Shen Yuan is passed out cold.
•••••••••••••••••••
“Oh my goodness! Wan Sujin!!” The voice is high pitched with shock and distinctly feminine. “Wan Sujin, quick go fetch Healer Yi! There’s a cultivator pup out here — he’s really injured!” The poor girl sounds half panicked, her voice cracking as if she’s swallowing back a sob or forcing herself not to shriek.
“What nonsense are you speaking now A-Tu?!” Another female voice; this one distinctly older, there’s a shuffle and Shen Yuan can feel the second voices footfalls as they move closer to the first voice. There’s a heavy silence and then a hissed curse.
“Shit, get it inside before someone sees! I’ll go fetch the Madame and Healer Yi but we can’t have some cultivator welp dying on our back doorstep!” The second voice chokes and the first murmurs a panicky sounding ok.
Then hands are carefully scooping under Shen Yuan’s weak and freezing body. He isn’t sure what wells up in him in that second. It’s an almost mixture of terror and rage at the touch; something inside him immediately wailing that this person isn’t pack. And before he even knows it he’s snarling weakly; forcing his heavy head to raise as long vicious teeth snap threateningly at whoever is touching him.
The first voice shrieks and he slams back into the pavement as he’s released and nearly screams at the pain that races through him. Eyes flying open Shen Yuan scrambles at the ground , gathering his legs beneath him in spite of the agony ripping through him and almost frantically trying to move away from where he can see red and gold skirts in the corner of his vision.
He’s whimpering; he realizes, a high pitched reedy sound that’s rolling through his body like an avalanche as he shoves himself towards empty crates across the alleyway. Some small weak part of himself desperately crying that he needs to hide: that he is weak and small and everyone is so much bigger.
“By the gods.” The second voice chokes and it sounds like they’re in pain or crying. Shen Yuan doesn’t particularly care, his fur is plastered to his body with rain and mud from the alleyway and his ears are pinned to his head; eyes wide and mouth hanging open as desperate heaving pants and whines escape him. It isn’t until he’s forcefully crammed his body between two of the heavy crates and painfully twists to glare out behind him that he remembers .
Transmigration. Proud Immortal Demon Way. Omegaverse — something about a Hao-something. Disciple or something, he isn’t sure; everything is vaguely hazy from his few minutes of waking the night before.
There are two woman gaping at him from the open door of one of the buildings. Both are younger; one significantly more so than the other. The elder is dressed in elaborate red and gold skirts, layered in such a way it gives the impression they could easily be tugged right off with soft red rouge put around her eyes making her look sharper and almost stunningly pretty in spite of the fact that she must be at least in her mid to late forties. The younger one is wearing simple pink and white robes and honestly looks like she’s about to cry; eyes red and puffy, one pale hand raised to cover her mouth.
“Actually A-Tu, you go get the Madame and healer. I’ll handle this.” The older woman announces and A-Tu (the younger) nods tearfully and races off. The elder woman’s sighs and flashes Shen Yuan a pity filled look.
“We mean you no harm sweetheart.” She murmurs gently, stepping off the porch, and onto the muddy walkway. Shen Yuan doesn't even register the fact that he’s barring his teeth , until a deep hissing snarl works its way from his throat. She raises her hands, a strange scent that reminds Shen Yuan of jasmine and something soft filters through the air and he’s relaxing immediately, that strange aggressive panic starting to settle.
“There we go, I’m just an omega sweetheart. I wouldn’t harm you.” She coos and if Shen Yuan was more aware he’d roll his eyes hard . Lots of Luo Binghe’s wives had been omegas and loads of them had been very capable of fucking shit up. Omega or not this was Proud Immortal Demon Way and in the long run everyone had their own strengths and weaknesses.
It wasn’t until the woman —
“I’m Wan Sujin” she announced softly.
It wasn’t until Wan Sujin began gently coaxing him from his hiding place that he registered that he wasn’t human .
The shock of it made him freeze up from where he’d been painfully inching out. Breath sharp and wheezing. His ears flat against his head; he’d slowly — painfully — turned his head to look at himself, at the thick pelt that was plastered to his body with mud and water, so coated with filth he couldn’t make out the color. At his paws and his tail. He was soaking wet so his fur was clinging to a slightly too skinny frame. But what really drew Shen Yuan’s attention was the gaping wound in his side.
It looked as if something had grabbed him; had dug it’s teeth into Shen Yuan’s flank and shook him. Leaving behind skin and fur hanging from his pelt and pale pink muscle exposed, blood still oozing sluggishly from what looked like a torn vein and staining the rest of the wound. He felt a little sick looking at it; it was no wonder he was in so much pain.
Then his mind registered the obvious. He was a wolf .
Part of the reason Proud Immortal Demon Way had gotten so popular was because it was an omegaverse cultivation novel that had somehow been crossed with werewolves of all things. Cultivators — demonic or righteous — would develop a second form along with their cultivation. As soon as they formed a stable golden core or demonic core they could shift into their wolf form, and their wolf form was always faster, stronger, more durable than their human one.
But, and correct him if he was wrong; Cultivator wolves were big. They were easily the size of horses and when a cultivator first shifted they were usually the size of small ponies. Because normally a cultivator couldn’t shift until they were around the age of sixteen.
The only exception had been Luo Binghe; who had shifted for the first time at the age of eleven. His shifting had been the only reason the scum villain Shen Qingqiu had allowed him to become an actual disciple rather than a glorified servant. A packless wolf was dangerous; a liability.
Shen Yuan was nearly a hundred percent positive that he was not sixteen. He was tiny; about the same size Luo Binghe was said to have been (perhaps even smaller) when he’d first shifted into his wolf form at the age of eleven. Even crouched and hunkered down like this his body should have at least reached this woman’s knees. But he was clearly only a little over halfway up her calves.
Almost frantically his mind flicked through plots; Shen Yuan’s System had shut off when he was still in shock from his transmigration and the only thing he could really recall was the surname Hao . Not that unusual of a surname it was spelt with the character for perfect. Perfect, prefect, perfect, .
It was that thought that reminded him. There was only one significant plot that involved that name.
Hao Baichen. Wife plot two hundred and sixteen. She had been popular because she was from a family of righteous cultivators descended from demons . Making her the closest to Luo Binghe in terms of biology (if still rather distant given it was just a Nature Demon they descended from not a heavenly demon, but still). It had been fascinating; demonic heritage mixed with human heritage being implied to make core development easier and therefore it was supposedly common with her family to shift very young. At the beginning stages of cultivation rather than complete core formation. Same as Luo Binghe.
Her plot had spanned nearly twenty chapters, (excessive for a wife plot as they normally only spanned five to six chapters) and she’d been one of Shen Yuan’s more loved characters due to how well fleshed out she’d been before Airplane — of course — ruined any of her character development with useless papapa plots; turning her into another ridiculous wife that didn’t care about anything but getting fucked by her husband.
Hao Baichen had been a Alpha Righteous Cultivator that spent more time in wolf form than human. She’d been fiercely independent and had refused to settle with a pack; having abandoned her sect in a desperate bid to find out what had happened to her baby brother, Hao Wang. He had gone missing mysteriously nearly sixteen years previously about a month after shifting for the first time at the age of ten.
The chapters had been some of Shen Yuan’s favorites because they’d read almost like a mystery thriller, crossed with high fantasy. Luo Binghe and Hao Baichen had worked together to find out what had actually happened to her long dead brother, all the while Hao Baichen had been suffering from mental breaks due to her lack of a pack that Luo Binghe had been helping her through. The truth of what had happened to her brother though, had been brutal and disgusting.
Hao Wang had been supposedly slain by his own shizun after his teacher had looked into why his disciple had shifted so early, and upon examining Hao Wang’s blood had found an unusually high amount of demon heritage; more even than the rest of his family. The pup’s shizun had then brutally hunted the boy down as if he actually was a demon and killed the child in a savage and painful way.
Luo Binghe had snuck into the man’s dreams to find the truth and to this day it remains as one of the darkest plots of PIDW (besides the endless abyss arc of course!). Luo Binghe had tortured the man into death and insanity after that. Much the same way he had his own shizun; finding himself resonating with the then deceased Hao Wang. After all, with his own terrible shizun, what happened to Hao Wang could have easily been Luo Binghe’s fate if his shizun had suspected Luo Binghe of having demonic heritage at all.
And this was where the story arc got very popular among critics; Hao Baichen and Luo Binghe had married of course, but instead of ruthlessly papapa’ing after the marriage for several chapters. The two had simply sat together and watched the sun set. Both reflecting on how their demonic and human heritage only seemed to bring out the worst in others, while quietly taking comfort in the other. It had been Shen Yuan’s favorite arc. One that left him in near tears, it had felt like a call back to the earlier chapters Airplane had written that promoted the character introspection that had made him originally love the novel.
Sadly, while popular and one of the most read arcs; it had received a huge amount of hate for its lack of papapa’ing and Airplane had never written another plot like it. Hao Baichen had only been seen later in rather disgusting wolf/wife orgies, much to Shen Yuan’s rage; she had mentioned wanting to be a teacher herself in her arc.
It seemed. . . Shen Yuan had most likely been transmigrated into poor little Hao Wang. Supposedly a devastatingly adorable child who would have been a prodigy like Luo Binghe if he’d lived (although obviously not as powerful as the protagonist!). He was only ten years old (something that quietly vexed the twenty year old) And somewhere he had an elder spit fire of a sister that loved her A-Wang dearly and although only fifteen, was frantically looking for him and would continue to look for him for two years before she was convinced to rest and let the matter go by her pack. The thought made his heart ache, because she would not get closure for nearly seventeen years. Part of Hao Baichen’s mind would always think about her precious baby brother. Her A-Wang would be a constant ache in her heart, as the two had been extremely close. (Having only been born a couple years apart.)
He snapped out of his stunned reprieve as a hand gently stroked over his head, nails scratching behind his ears in a way that felt nice but left him unsettled. He flinched down bodily with a sick feeling, shaking minutely as pain throbbed through his side and shoulder.
It didn’t make any sense . Hao Wang was supposed to be dead; brutally murdered in the woods by his Shizun and left to rot without even a grave or proper burial rituals, so Hao Baichen and Luo Binghe could find his exposed, tiny (brutalized) wolf bones later and give him a proper burial. It was one of the most important character arcs for Luo Binghe (in Shen Yuan’s opinion) and he didn’t understand how he’d wound up here; in a town being soothed by a courtesan.
He felt almost numb with shock as Wan Sujin carefully scooped him up, seemingly uncaring as his wet and dirty fur soaked into her pretty red dress robes. He whined hollowly, weakly placing his head on her shoulder as she hummed gentle soothing words. The soft scent of her surrounding them.
It was all too much; he was in so much pain, and he was tired. Even though it wasn’t him, an incredibly small and emotional part of him wanted to start hysterically sobbing; he was only a child and had been viciously attacked by an adult he was supposed to have trusted. All at once Shen Yuan was hit with the sheer horrific betrayal that had befallen Hao Wang’s small body. How deeply wronged the poor boy had been.
The kid was only ten. And he had spent his last moments begging his shizun (a man he had seen as a surrogate father figure) to stop hurting him.
Shen Yuan’s own actual real life sister had a six year old son; his nephew. And the thought of someone hurting his nephew the way Hao Wang had been hurt left a sick feeling in his belly and chest. If he was human he was sure he’d be sobbing. Not for the first time he found himself cursing Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky and his habit of writing tragedy for tragedy’s sake.
He whined sadly, pressing his snout into Wan Sujin’s throat and huffing at the warm jasmine scent she gave off — omega, safe . Allowing himself and his newfound instincts to draw comfort from it. Her hand was stroking up and down his soaking wet back as she carried him inside.
Shen Yuan squeezed his eyes shut, as tragic as Hao Wang’s story was; it had been important to Luo Binghe. As awful as it was to leave Hao Baichen frantically searching; Shen Yuan was not Hao Wang. He couldn’t show up alive again. His death had to spur Hao Baichen into desperation so she’d be on the future emperor's radar. Luo Binghe needed the closure Hao Wang’s arc had offered; which meant that Hao Wang had to be dead.
Shen Yuan would not seek out the boy's sister. Even as a small part of him wailed with dismay. He’d allow her to think her little brother dead, while he became a rogue cultivator or something under a different name; hell he should just use his own name. The Hao family was barely known and well hidden, serving under a small meaningless sect to the north. Nobody would recognize him if he stayed away from the area.
He whined shrilly as he was carefully lowered down onto a table that had towels laid out across it. The shock of how warm the towels were made him shake wildly, struggling slightly even as Wan Sujin gently steadied him, her hand cupping Shen Yuan’s snout and tilting his head back as she hummed, murmuring quiet nonsense while other hands holding more towels gently smoothed over his fur; rubbing warmth into his frozen limbs.
And now that something was being done about how cold and wet he was; Shen Yuan started shaking with near violent shivers. Wan Sujin murmured something to him again but he was mostly focused on the sound of a different woman’s voice, snarling weakly as hands touched carefully at the raw skin around his side.
“Easy sweetheart, that’s Healer Yi; she’s just looking at your wound.” Wan Sujin whispered and Shen Yuan shook wildly, irrational fear crawling up his throat and chest. But everything felt hazy and cold even as he shook with weak snarls. Distant almost, and he panted harshly, slumping weakly as Wan Sujin stroked his head.
“I think he’s going into shock, Healer Yi.” She hissed over his head and a woman’s voice responded; tight with a mixture of pain and worry.
“I’ll give him a sedative in just a second; I need to stop the bleeding, whatever happened to him tore a main artery, and it’s a miracle he hasn’t bled out, I have to suture it.” A question Shen Yuan couldn’t quite make out came from Wan Sujin and The second woman; Healer Yi, hissed.
“Of course I did! I’ve already sent a letter by the third talisman to Master Shen. He should be here with a cultivation doctor in the next few days knowing him. The most we can do is keep the pup stable.”
“You used the ones he gave us that were for emergencies only right? We need him here fast; I don’t know much about cultivators, but I know they’re as good as wild demons without a pack or companion.” Wan Sujin demanded, as something hot but strangely cool and numbing ran over Shen Yuan’s throbbing side and he whined.
“Of course I did A-Su. You know he’d deem this of serious importance.” Healer Yi huffed. “Hold the pup still he’s not gonna like this. Madame Jun, could you hold his hind legs down?” hands were suddenly braced against Shen Yuan’s shoulders and hips, securing his body down tightly and he whined again, a tiny flicker of panic racing up his spine at the touch.
He struggled for a minute through the fog clouding his mind, painful shivers ripping up and down his frame as the hands holding him tightened, pinning him down to the table and —
Pain raced like an avalanche from the direct center of Shen Yuan’s wound and he jerked . A horrid noise ripping his lips as he twisted with a shriek. Almost frantically struggling against the hands holding him. Wan Sujin was desperately whispering soothing words in his ear but Shen Yuan didn’t care. Everything was too cold, and spinning and he felt so weak . Pain racing through him as he twisted his head to try and snap at the hands holding him only to find his muzzle firmly pinned to the table by another hand.
There was another tugging bolt of agony in his side and Shen Yuan heaved, the world swaying alarmingly and his eyes rolled back, as for the second time in twenty-four hours, Shen Yuan passed out cold.
••••••••••••••••
It started as a game. The boy liked this game — he had only just shifted for the first time (“Too young.”, his shizun had muttered with a troubled expression and the boy had been too naive to realize it wasn’t praise.) and he wasn’t very good at controlling the wolf’s instincts. He hadn’t even presented yet after all; and without a subgender to temper the wildness of the wolf, sometimes the boy had little more control than an actual wolf pup would.
His shizun had come up with the game; almost like tag. He’d take the boy out into the woods and they’d both shift, and the boy was supposed to chase his shizun and try and catch him, or run away if his shizun was the one chasing. It helped with the itchy restlessness that had settled in the boys stomach and chest like an awkward balloon.
“That’s normal didi!” His jiejie had laughed when he’d complained, running her hands through his hair with a mischievous grin and he’d nodded seriously. Jiejie was much older than him. She’d presented as a beta a few months ago and clearly knew much more than him! She’d had her wolf form for ages! She’d shifted even younger than he had and he could remember how big she’d been. Big enough to easily carry him in her jaws even though he’d been four years old. Idly he’d wondered if she’d carry him again and then flushed furiously; shaking the thought away. The boy was no longer a baby! He needed to carry himself!
But Shizun had insisted this game would help with the restless energy pouring through the boy’s body like a hot river, and it did! The boy raced with his shizun nearly every night. Ducking and weaving through underbrush in wild abandon, joy crawling through his veins anytime he was bowled over and teasingly nudged by his shizun.
The game wasn’t fun today.
The boy didn’t know why but his shizun was being mean . He’d been too rough earlier, grabbing at his smaller body and leaving a deep cut on his side. The boy didn’t like it. He had danced off with a nervous yelp, tail tucked as he’d turned with wide eyes to his shizun’s dusty brown wolf. Shizun hadn’t seemed to care; had snarled at him with something like malevolence in his eyes and lunged —
Shen Yuan jolted awake with a heaving gasp. He whined lowly in his throat, paws shuffling as he weakly pressed back into the softness around him.
It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the bright lighting of the room he was in; there was a desk to his right, covered in papers and such with a wall of tiny drawers behind it. The room he was in was longer than it was wide and he could see around seven other low lying beds in it; he himself had carefully been situated on one and was all but swaddled in blankets.
There was no one in the room but him and Shen Yuan took the chance to examine himself.
He was still a wolf.
His fur was still streaked with mud but it was dry and cracking now, dusty instead of wet; he still couldn’t tell what his fur looked like, just that it must be lighter, maybe a soft gray but he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t move his left front leg.
It had been bound tightly to his chest, tied up against himself with clean white bandages that were wrapped thickly around his torso and all but glowed against his filthy fur.
His head hurt. A tiny whine slipped from his muzzle as he struggled to reorientate himself in his makeshift nest, body shaking but not with exhaustion as he squirmed.
There was a creaking sound and he flinched, head flying up and locking on a simply dressed woman, her hair done in a tight top knot and her shoulders slumped as she stepped into the room. She turned to shut the door behind her and heaved a sigh, stretching her arms up above her before turning to face the room. Immediately their eyes met his and she seemed just as astonished to see him awake, as he was to see her period .
They both remained frozen and Shen Yuan’s ears heated up, a strange sort of embarrassment racing through him the longer the eye contact went on. Something in his chest was whining that it wasn’t proper to keep looking her in the eye and he could feel a weird mortification racing through his limbs at it. After a few more seconds of eye contact he jerked his eyes away, struggling to sit up more, unbound front paw shaking wildly as it struggled to brace his full body.
“Oh no please stay laying down!” The woman yelped and Shen Yuan froze again, awkwardly allowing his body to sink back down into the blankets surrounding him as he stared at her. She moved quickly across the room and he shrunk lower with every step she made towards him.
“I wasn’t able to fully close your wound because of the nature of it — I’m not a Cultivation healer, and too much movement could make the wound worse.” She explained gently. Shen Yuan nodded as if he understood even though he really didn’t.
Although he supposed that it did make sense in a way once he thought about it; forcibly trying to recenter his brain into the thought process of this world. If she wasn’t a Cultivation healer it probably stood to reason that she wouldn’t even know how to handle a wolf injury in the first place. Cultivators were the only ones that could shift after all,
“My name is Healer Yi, and I know this must be a lot for you, but don’t worry. We’ve already made efforts to locate your own sect and return you to them.” The words sent a bone deep chill over Shen Yuan’s body and he bristled, fur crackling and itching uncomfortably as something like panic raced through him.
Listen, Shen Yuan may have been put in Hao Wang’s body against his will but he was even less keen of dying again than he was of being here! If they returned him back to his old Sect; Hao Wang’s scummy shizun would undoubtedly just slaughter him for the simple fact he was related to demons! Shen Yuan didn’t want anything to do with that! He’d already made up his mind that he was going to be a rogue Cultivator and go hide in a hole or something! Train himself up for the inevitable end of the world when Luo Binghe merged the realms!
He bolted up; adrenaline enabling him to force himself to his feet where he wobbled precariously. He bared his teeth at Healer Yi when the woman made a deeply worried noise and stepped closer.
He would not be returning back to the original good’s sect; no thank you!
“Hey, hey, no! Lay back down! Please kid, you’ll aggravate your wounds!” The woman shrieked, stepping forward but he was already scrambling back, panic making him dizzy and he screeched as he fell off the edge of the bed. Instantly a flare of pain ripped through him and before he could even think his mind was shifting.
He didn’t know where he was; there was a strange woman telling him she was sending him back to danger, he was alone and he didn’t have a pack — he was alone. A horrific snarl ripped from his lips as he bared his teeth at the woman, hobbling back, body twisted in on itself and ears pinned flat, his tail tucked as far as it would go and his haunches shaking with the sudden bolt of terror that raced through him.
A distant part of Shen Yuan was deeply embarrassed by his own reaction. After all, he logically knew what was going on; that he wasn’t in any true danger at this exact moment, but the thoughts didn’t really matter in the face of these instincts rushing through him.
He couldn’t move correctly, he was trapped in a room and he couldn’t sense any other wolves and when his mind reached out instinctively for connection, a burst of spiritual energy pumping through his veins as he searched for his pack bond, Shen Yuan found nothing. His fur bristled with horror at the gaping emptiness of the fact. Something in his chest wailing that this isn’t right —
The woman had backed up a step, her own face pale as Shen Yuan growled at her, lips pulled back to show a full mouth of sharp teeth. She hesitated then took a single step forward.
Instantly Shen Yuan was barking . Hackles raised and eyes wide as he snapped his jaws, forcing savage little barks from a constricting throat. He didn’t want her near him ; she wasn’t pack! She wasn’t even a wolf!
“Honey I don’t — I didn’t mean to scare you I’m sorry —“ she looked both helpless and shocked as she danced back a few feet and Shen Yuan snarled again, his body sinking lower and flank heaving as he sucked in lungfuls of air almost frantically.
“Step away from him; you’re crowding him.” The voice was so sudden that Shen Yuan’s head snapped up without thinking. There was a man standing in the doorway.
Shen Yuan had only a few seconds to think that the man was rather handsome. That he looked to be almost ageless in an otherworldly way, with long pitch black hair pulled back into a half bun and tan and white robes; a strangely gentle look on his face and a kind intelligence in his dark eyes before his instincts were swarming through him again.
He didn’t even realize he’d moved until he nearly toppled over, hobbling a few steps towards the man with an almost pleading whimper tearing from his throat.
The man cast him a concerned look, a low rumble coming from his throat and just like that, the panic in his chest and throat was gone. That desperate feeling slipping away like water. The man stared at him, a strange look on his face as Shen Yuan visibly relaxed and he nearly bristled again as he hummed.
“Well, that’s odd.”
Listen, he’d only been here like two days! And both of those days he’d been in pain and unconscious! Forgive him if he was struggling just a little with being trapped in the body of a goddamned wolf after nearly being murdered! Excuse him if he couldn’t control this stupid shit thing!
The man is moving closer to him, and now Shen Yuan really is bristling again. Fur cracking awkwardly with the dried mud. He sways slightly, common sense telling him that the kind beautiful man has slightly high ‘Important Character’ Energy. (In spite of the rather odd moustache) But the wolf side is unsure, a prickling sort of fear that swarms up his legs and chest and tightness in his throat. This man felt strange, he’s a wolf like Shen Yuan; he knows that much, but he’s also entirely unfamiliar.
The man kneels down on one knee to get a better look into Shen Yuan’s face and he flicks his eyes away, shriveling down into the floor with alarm. Why is he kneeling?!
“You don’t need to be afraid. I won’t harm you.” The man hums softly, Shen Yuan eyes the dark space under one of the medical beds (raised higher than a futon for easy access by a healer) to his left, some pathetic part of him wondering how shameful it would be to simply give way to these new overwhelming instincts and crawl into the welcoming dark space. “This master’s name is Mu Qingfang, peak lord to Cian Cao Peak belonging to the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.”
Shen Yuan snaps his head around to the man so fast a bolt of pain races through his wounded shoulder, but he can’t bring it in himself to care. Mu Qingfang????
No fucking way! He is not standing before one of the peak lords of the protagonists child hood torture chamber! He’s barely breathing in his shock, eyes desperately tracing the healer's face.
Mu Qingfang’s fate had never been mentioned in the original novel but it had been explicitly stated that Luo Binghe had razed the entire sect to the ground; so Shen Yuan could bet that his fate hadn’t ended well. And he was here, talking to Shen Yuan, who knew for a fact that the Hao family lived closer to the Tian Yi Sect than Cang Qiong. So why had the women called him?
Better yet; wasn’t this a prostitution pavilion?! How had Mu Qingfang even found him?!
He couldn’t imagine what the expressions on his face even looked like, but knew his eyes must be wider than moons; ears flat and jaw slightly open. He probably at least looked very startled,
“Ah, so you recognize this master's name?” Mu Qingfang tilts his head and it takes considerable effort to force down Shen Yuan’s own shock and school his wolf face into nothing. Hobbling back a single step. “Would you do this master the honor of shifting back so he can know your own name?”
Mu Qingfang is all gentle silence, voice low and soothingly soft. A balm against Shen Yuan's spinning thoughts and frayed nerves. And no
Fuck this actually; Shen Yuan wants exactly nothing to do with the main characters in PIDW! He is going to run off into the wilderness and become some cryptid rogue cultivator far far away from Cang Qiong or Huan Hua or Tian Yi or his own sect. Somewhere near the borderlands where no one focuses any energy! He’s read enough xianxia cultivation novels that he’s sure he can puzzle out cultivation on his own thank you! He’s not getting mixed in with the death trap that is Cang Qiong Mountain sect!!!!
Why would he even want to be near a sect that actively and viciously abused Luo Binghe anyways?! Sure the other peak lords never hurt him but no one ever stopped it. And it was extremely obvious. Complacency did not excuse lack of action! And besides! Original goods' own shizun had tried to kill him for being distantly related to a demon. Shen Yuan could say with full honesty that he fully expected to be killed if his own demonic inheritance wasn’t sealed like Luo Binghe’s.
Mind made up he quickly and rapidly backs away, legs shaking as he casts his gaze around the room for an escape. His new instincts seemed to be in complete agreement with him; going on high alert as he scanned the room for an exit.
“Mu-shidi, he’s going to try and run, knock him out so he doesn’t injure himself.” The voice is airy, slightly low pitched; a pleasant sort of voice with a sharp undertone to it that almost bites. Shen Yuan tenses at the words though; eyes flying to the door again he only catches the elegant swish of white and pale green robes and a flash of cold jade green eyes, before a hand grips the scruff of his neck. Fingers digging awkwardly into his throat; there’s a jolt of something almost electric racing through his veins and then his eyes are rolling up as he’s knocked out cold.