Chapter Text
Shen Yuan had died as if it were nothing. No, he wouldn’t think about that. He wouldn’t talk about it. Shen Yuan had given birth as if it were nothing. No, he wouldn’t think about that either. He wouldn’t talk about it. Those things were nothing. They were nothing.
And no, he wasn’t lying to himself. That would be stupid. Shen Yuan was perfectly honest with himself. Which was exactly why he chose to ignore the problem (no, those problems).
The little thing he had — ugh — given birth to was lying on the bed. Crying. And crying. And crying. Shen Yuan, who was very much a man thank you, glanced down at his very real, very full, very medium-sized breasts and immediately felt the urge to cry too. So he did the only reasonable thing: he sat on the floor, curled into a fetal position, and stayed there for almost thirty minutes while the baby wailed in solidarity.
After giving himself a full half hour to panic, grieve, and question every life choice that had led to this moment, Shen Yuan finally peeled himself off the ground. Miserable, exhausted, and reluctantly functional, he lifted his head and stared at the child.
The child was… a baby, certainly. At least, Shen Yuan was mostly sure. There were many plants and demons that disguised themself to seem like a baby.
So small it looked like one strong breeze could blow it off the bed. Soft dark hair lay flattened against its round skull, sticking up in odd little tufts like it had lost a fight with its own amniotic fluid. Its skin was pale with a faint, rosy warmth, the kind of fresh, fragile softness that made him terrified to even breathe too hard around it.
Its eyes, currently squeezed shut in outrage, were ridiculously big, framed by damp eyelashes that clung together every time it hiccupped between cries. Its mouth was tiny, pink, wobbling in the sort of trembling pout that activated a biological response Shen Yuan denied having.
Its hands were absurdly small. Fists the size of steamed buns. Deadly weapons of cuteness. Horrifying.
And yet, despite all that softness, something beneath it felt unmistakably… potent. Like a baby who, given enough time, might grow into someone terrifyingly important.
A baby. A real baby. His baby.
The Scum Villain, said the System.
Shen Yuan wanted to lie back down and resume panicking immediately. His very first instinct was to run. The kid was cute, yes, but Shen Yuan was terrified. He had never even held a baby before! Shen Yuan wasn’t qualified for this. He wasn’t emotionally prepared for this. He wasn’t even spiritually prepared for this.
Yet everything stopped the moment the baby opened its eyes. Black, liquid-dark eyes blinked up at him, and in them Shen Yuan saw his own reflection. Pale, wide-eyed, and wearing the expression of someone halfway to losing their mind. He gasped, startled by just how deranged he looked.
The baby didn’t care. The baby simply looked at him… and lifted its tiny arms. A universal gesture, simple and devastating: Pick me up.
All his cowardly instincts shattered at once.
This baby was so — Well, he didn’t have the vocabulary yet. But it was cute. Dangerously cute. And suddenly Shen Yuan couldn’t imagine turning away. How could he let this child suffer? How could he abandon something so small and helpless?
He swallowed hard, realizing with horror and a strange, warm dread that he wouldn’t.
So, Shen Yuan picked the baby up.
Badly.
He slid his hands under the tiny creature like he was trying to scoop a fragile melon from a grocery bin. One hand was under the baby’s back, the other under… one leg? Somehow? The angle was atrocious. The baby’s head wobbled with the grim determination of someone about to sue him for negligence.
The baby took one offended inhale and wailed.
Shen Yuan panicked. “Okay! Okay, that wasn’t right — sorry, sorry — don’t die!” He hastily lowered the baby back onto the bed, arms shaking.
New strategy. He had seen people do this in dramas.
He slid one hand behind the baby’s neck, except he missed the neck entirely and caught the shoulder instead. His other hand went under the tiny torso, except it slipped and ended up dangerously close to the diaper region. When he lifted, the baby folded slightly like an unhappy dumpling.
The baby’s face scrunched up. It turned bright red.
Then it cried even louder, the kind of cry that made Shen Yuan question the structural integrity of the room.
“No — no, come on! I swear I’m not doing this on purpose!” Shen Yuan squeaked, voice cracking. His breathing hitched. “There should be a manual for this! A tutorial! A pop-up window! Something! System, come back here!”
The baby continued screaming, betrayed and vibrating with tiny fury.
Shen Yuan stared helplessly at the wriggling bundle in his shaky hands, realizing three things very quickly: He absolutely sucked at this. The baby absolutely knew he sucked at this. They both are going to die one way or another.
It took a long time.
(Far too long.)
After the second catastrophic attempt, Shen Yuan lowered the baby back onto the bed with the delicacy of someone defusing a bomb and staggered a few steps backward. He ran both hands through his hair, pacing in a tight circle like a trapped animal.
“Okay. Okay. Calm down. You are a grown adult. You have watched at least six dramas with babies in them. You can do this,” he muttered.
The baby hiccupped a cry at him. He flinched like he had been stabbed. So began the Great Baby-Picking-Up Trial of Shen Yuan’s life.
He approached the baby again. Slowly, reverently, like the child was a sacred relic made of thin glass and spite. He extended his hands… then froze. Did the head go on his arm? Or his hand? Or his fingers? Did babies have weak… neck bones? Could neck bones be weak?
He didn’t know.
And the uncertainty made his knees wobble.
He tried again, sliding his hand behind the baby’s neck, but too high, so his palm covered half the child’s cheek. The baby made a confused squeak, which terrified Shen Yuan into retreating again.
Minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. He kept trying. Each time wrong in a slightly new, slightly impressive way.
At one point, he attempted the “scoop from underneath” method. The baby responded by flailing all four limbs in chaotic objection, tiny fists punching at the air like he was summoning a heavenly tribulation.
“Sorry! Sorry! I know, I know, I’m trash!” Shen Yuan yelped, placing him back down.
Another time, he tried supporting the baby entirely with his forearms, creating a precarious cradle formation that looked less like a safe hold and more like he was preparing to serve the baby on a platter. The baby wriggled, slid half an inch sideways, and immediately burst into a fresh wave of screaming.
Shen Yuan nearly burst into tears alongside him.
The struggle continued, in a loop of failure and determination: Pick up attempt. Baby cries. Shen Yuan panics. Baby cries louder. Shen Yuan panics louder internally. Repeat.
By the thirty-minute mark, Shen Yuan’s breathing was uneven, his hands were trembling, and he had mentally drafted no fewer than eight resignation letters to fate itself.
But he kept going.
Step by painstaking step, he inched closer to understanding.
How the head needed support. How the tiny spine curved gently. How incredibly small the body was. How terrifyingly dependent this baby was on him.
He swallowed hard, feeling something warm and frightening curl in his chest. Shen Yuan was still scared out of his mind and still had no idea what he was doing. But he wasn’t giving up.
When he somehow finally got it, miraculously, after what felt like an hour of spiritual torture, the baby was trembling in his arms like a distressed little dumpling. Its face was an absolute mess: blotchy red, streaked with tears, a glossy ribbon of snot sliding toward its mouth, lips wobbling from the emotional devastation of being mishandled repeatedly.
Shen Yuan stared at the pitiful disaster of a baby and felt guilt stab him right in the chest. “Oh no… oh no, you poor thing… I broke you,” he whispered.
He grabbed a handful of his hanfu sleeve and used it as a makeshift cloth. It was not an expensive one, honestly a cheap, rough thing he had grabbed without much thought. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t elegant. But it was clean enough.
He awkwardly dabbed at the baby’s face. The fabric wasn’t gentle, so he adjusted quickly, switching from frantic wiping to small, careful strokes. He cleared the tears trailing down the chubby cheeks, wiped away the snot that threatened to drip, brushed the dampness clinging to the tiny eyelashes.
The sleeve grew disgusting quickly.
The baby blinked at him through the mess, hiccuping weakly, eyes swollen and glossy with betrayal.
Shen Yuan swallowed and kept cleaning. “There… there. See? Not ruined. Just — just a little messy,” he muttered, half-apologizing, half-trying to convince himself. The little thing put its tiny hand to its mouth and sucked on its fist, big teary eyes staring up at Shen Yuan like the world’s saddest, hungriest creature.
Shen Yuan sighed. Yeah. He knew what that meant. Unfortunately.
“Alright, alright… don’t look at me like that,” he muttered.
With trembling hands, he loosened the front of his cheap hanfu, carefully guiding the fabric aside. He closed his eyes. Out of embarrassment, out of resignation, out of sheer please-don’t-let-this-kill-me.
Then he felt a small, warm weight press clumsily against his chest. It hurt. It hurt immediately. The baby latched on with all the finesse of someone who had never been alive before. Which, to be fair, was exactly the case. Instead of sucking properly, the baby seemed to… bite? Gum? Clamp down with wild desperation?
Shen Yuan hissed through his teeth. “Ow — okay — okay, gentle — gentle— You little —”
But the baby didn’t understand gentle. The baby understood hunger. It kept trying, mouth slipping, latching too shallowly, then too hard, pulling at the wrong angle. The suction was inconsistent. Too weak one second, then suddenly too strong. Each attempt sent sharp little shocks of pain through Shen Yuan’s already sensitive chest.
And then —
A sting. A sharper pain. He pulled back slightly, startled, and felt something warm and wet that definitely wasn’t milk. He looked down. A tiny smear of red.Small, barely anything, but enough to make Shen Yuan’s heart stop.
“Oh my god — oh my god no — NO — Stop! —Holy shit!”
The baby, startled by his panicked voice, released him and immediately burst into wailing again, tiny face scrunching into tragic misery. Shen Yuan practically choked on air. His hands flapped uselessly in panic.
“Nonononono don’t cry — why are YOU crying?! I’m the one bleeding! How does this happen?! Babies aren’t supposed to — there was no — tutorial for this!”
He was sweating. The baby was screaming. His chest throbbed.
In short: everything was terrible.
Breastfeeding was supposed to be natural, ancient, instinctive.
It was not.
Not for him. Not for the baby.
Sometimes it bit. Sometimes it gummed. Sometimes it simply… gnawed with determination.
Shen Yuan hissed, winced, flinched, and occasionally let out a strangled yelp. The baby would pull back, offended, and cry with an intensity that made his soul collapse. It was common for Shen Yuan to spend the next hour after feeding the child trying to soothe them both.
So, as you may have noticed, the first few days of mothering were exactly like that: terrible, painful, and not even remotely comfortable. Shen Yuan did not know anything about parenting. He knew the basics (don’t drop the baby, feed the baby, keep the baby alive), but that was a given for any semi-functional adult.
Actually doing those things?
That was another story entirely.
He messed up the small, common things every new and overwhelmed parent seemed to screw up, just… maybe with extra flair, since this was xianxia China. There were no diapers. No baby bottles. No wet wipes. No manuals. No internet. Just Shen Yuan, one helpless newborn, and a world built on the assumption that everyone already knew what they were doing (or had someone that knew what they were doing to help).
He did not.
And so, Shen Yuan proceeded to mess up the most basic, everyday tasks while he struggled like someone attempting a boss fight at level 1.
Without diapers, he had to rely on squares of cloth; simple cotton, fraying at the edges, soft only in theory. They were supposed to be folded with practiced, easy motions. They were supposed to be tied securely with thin strips of fabric. Except Shen Yuan had never tied anything more complicated than shoelaces in his previous life.
His first attempt? A disaster.
He folded the cloth wrong, somehow into a triangle instead of a square, then wrapped it too tightly around the baby’s middle. The poor child squirmed, uncomfortable and rigid, tiny face scrunching into an unhappy grimace. Shen Yuan panicked instantly.
“This is wrong. This is so wrong. I’m torturing my own baby,” he muttered as he untied the knot. Too quickly. The cloth fell apart in his hands. Everything inside spilled onto his lap. He froze. Then whispered: “…I want to die.”
The second attempt was looser. Too loose. The cloth slid down the baby’s legs after only a few minutes like a defeated flag. Shen Yuan only realized when warm liquid dripped onto the floor.
The third attempt? He tried to adjust it mid-wrap, lost hold of one corner, and the entire cloth caught air like a handkerchief being waved in surrender. The baby watched him with wide, damp, unimpressed eyes. Shen Yuan had never felt so despised by someone so small.
With the diaper dirty in hands, he had another problem: Ancient laundry could be summed up in one word — suffering.
He spent long hours crouched over a low wooden basin. Cold water numbed his fingers to the bone. The soap, a crude lye brick, stripped the oils from his skin until his knuckles were cracked and bleeding.
Baby cloths piled up at a horrifying speed. He would wash one set, wring it dry, hang it outside, only to turn around and find the baby had already soiled another. And another. And another.
By the end of the second day, Shen Yuan was certain the child was producing waste at an inhuman rate. He scrubbed and scrubbed, back aching, ribs protesting from hunching over. More than once, he found himself blinking rapidly as his vision blurred.
At first he thought he was getting dizzy from exhaustion. Then he realized he was crying into the wash water. He wiped his eyes with the back of his raw, reddened hand and muttered, “I was not built for this era… I can’t keep doing this…” before reaching into the basin again.
With the cheap clothes clean after a long time of torture, Shen Yuan needed to put those around the baby. He had noticed that it liked the warmth. Yet, it was impossible — impossible — to guess a baby’s temperature in a house that was colder inside than outside.
He tucked the baby into blankets, layers upon layers, until it resembled a tiny, swaddled winter melon. After five minutes, a sheen of sweat appeared on the baby’s forehead. He panicked and removed everything at once. The baby’s lower lip trembled from the sudden chill. Another meltdown.
He tried again. One layer. Two layers.
Maybe add a hat?
No hat. The baby didn’t like the hat.
Maybe socks?
The baby kicked off the socks.
He tried warming the room with candles — five candles, actually — before realizing the smoke was making the child cough.
He extinguished them and opened the windows for air. A cold breeze blasted through and the baby instantly let out a startled cry.
“How did my parents survive this?!” he demanded at the wind. At the System.
The wind did not answer. The System laughed at him and wished him good luck.
After feeding the baby, changing the diaper and having a meltdown about the temperature, there was another problem: bath time.
Bathe the baby, he thought. Easy, he thought.
He was wrong.
Heating water required boiling a kettle over a fire. By the time it cooled to a safe temperature, the baby had already soiled itself again, and he had to reheat the entire kettle.
The first bath was too quick. He was terrified of the baby getting cold. He poured warm water over the baby’s tiny body, hands trembling so badly the water splashed everywhere except where it should. The baby shrieked. He shrieked back.
The second bath was too slow. He tried to be gentle, washing each little limb carefully. Halfway through, the water cooled. The baby shrieked louder.
“Okay, I know, I know. Sorry, sorry!” Shen Yuan cried.
Bathing quickly became a ritual of shared misery.
And, to finish, there was swaddling the baby. It should have been simple fabric geometry. It was not. The cloth refused to fold evenly. The baby refused to lie still. The universe refused to help him.
He wrapped too tightly once, and the baby’s offended glare could have pierced steel. He wrapped too loosely another time, and the child wiggled out like an escape artist, ending up half-covered, arms flailing in triumph. Once, he wrapped the baby so unevenly that one arm stuck straight out, stiff and accusatory, like the child was pointing at him and declaring: This man is incompetent.
Shen Yuan believed it. Because he was.
The truth was simple: Parenting in ancient China was hard. Doing it alone was harder. Doing it alone with no idea what he was doing was nearly impossible.
But he kept going. Fumbling. Panicking. Trying again. Because this tiny, messy, furious little life depended entirely on him. And despite the struggle… despite the pain… despite the countless disasters…
He refused to give up.
After two months of doing absolutely the worst any new parent could possibly do, Shen Yuan had learned everything the hard way. There were no manuals. No enlightenment from the Heavens. No kindly old aunties to take pity on him. Just him, a squirmy infant, and the crushing realization that parenting was like playing a survival game on hardcore difficulty. He was the Scum Villain's mother now.
The body he currently occupied, this little lady whose life he had inherited, lived in a shadowed, forgotten corner outside the city walls. The city itself belonged to Hua Hua’s territory: bright pagodas, carved stone, lanterns that never dimmed, a life of fragrance and prosperity. But Shen Yuan lived where the lantern light did not reach. Dirt paths. Thin walls. Smoke from other people’s cooking fires trailing like ghosts. He had searched quietly, desperately at first, for some trace of Original Good’s family, but there was nothing. No relatives. No friends. No neighbors who even remembered her name. Just silence.
Now, with the baby finally napping in a patch of warm afternoon sun, little hands tucked under its cheek, little breaths puffing like a dormouse, Shen Yuan tried to make the most of the moment. He rinsed their clothes by the riverbank, scrubbing until his fingers ached. Water splashed over the stones, and when he leaned forward, he caught sight of his reflection in the Luo River.
A stranger stared back.
Shen Yuan blinked. The woman in the water did not blink with him. She simply gazed upward with soft, mournful eyes framed by dark lashes. She was beautiful. So beautiful it startled him every time he accidentally saw himself in a polished kettle or a bit of calm water. A delicate little willow branch of a girl. A face that would fit perfectly beside Luo Binghe in some tragic harem arc, the kind of peerless beauty authors wrote folktales about.
And she was… so young.
Not young enough to be a teenage mother, thank the Heavens, but young enough to make his modern sensibilities recoil a bit every time he thought too long about it. This girl should be at a club, Shen Yuan thought, feeling unexpectedly mournful. Doing shots, failing college exams, swiping left on disappointing men, not — He gestured vaguely at himself. Not breastfeeding in a shack outside the city. Forgotten.
He reached toward the water. His fingertip brushed the reflection, and the smooth face wavered, ripples spreading outward like quiet laughter.
A stranger’s face dissolving beneath his touch.
And yet — his, completely.
So, with grim determination, and two months of eating nothing but plain rice and warm water, Shen Yuan finally ventured into the city. He hadn't done anything like that ever since arriving here, he was afraid he would go to the market and the baby died after he dropped it.
With paranoia in his mind, the baby was tied securely against his chest with a long strip of cloth he had copied from the maids he’d spied on from afar. He had spent an embarrassing amount of time hiding behind market stalls, bushes, and corners of alleyways, watching how women secured infants to their backs or fronts. Eventually he managed something that vaguely resembled their methods: not elegant, not symmetrical, but stable enough that the baby wasn’t falling out. That counted as a win.
He kept his hands free this way, because if he had to hold the baby and do anything resembling work, the Heavens would have to descend personally to save him.
Job hunting, as it turned out, was absolute misery for a single mother in ancient China.
Everywhere he went, women were accepted with tight smiles and men were accepted with nods of respect, but a young woman with no husband, no family, and a baby strapped to her chest? Doors shut in his face faster than he could bow.
At the weaving house, the forewoman narrowed her eyes at him. “Your baby will cry and disrupt the others. We cannot take responsibility for that.”
At the laundry yard, a group of washerwomen exchanged looks, then one whispered loudly, “She has no mother-in-law? No clan? Something must be wrong with her,” while deliberately scrubbing clothes harder, as if morality could be washed clean.
At the teahouse, the owner looked him up and down, gaze lingering too long on his face. “You’re too pretty,” he declared bluntly. “My wife would beat me to death.”
At the incense shop, the elderly mistress of the house frowned. “Where is your husband?” Shen Yuan, inwardly screaming, bowed. “Away.” She tsked. “So young, such bad fortune. I cannot bring misfortune into my business.”
At the brewery, a man snorted and nodded at the baby. “That little thing will piss on the floor. No.”
At the bakery, the owner actually tried to be nice. “You look delicate, Miss. Are you sure you can carry flour sacks?”
Shen Yuan wanted to die. Or commit murder. Either would be fine.
The baby, sensing his mother’s rising despair, decided to cry at full volume; loud enough that birds took off from nearby roofs. People in the street winced. A few glared. A few muttered, “Tsk, this is why widows should remarry quickly.”
It took every ounce of Shen Yuan’s self-control not to shout, I’m not a widow AND I’m not a woman! But he held it in. Barely.
By midday, his legs hurt, his chest ached from the baby’s weight, and he had been rejected from eleven different establishments. The sun burned overhead. Sweat stuck the cloth of his hanfu to his back. His stomach growled like an angry spiritual beast.
He found a quiet alley to slump against, baby fussing against his chest, and thought bleakly: Being a single mother in ancient China sucks.
But he wasn’t giving up. He refused. If the world didn’t want him, he’d pry open the door with his bare hands.
Or… find the shadiest, least reputable job possible.
Either way, he was getting something.
After a long day of nothing (no work, no money, no hope, no mercy from anyone), Shen Yuan dragged himself back to the shack he called home.
He gently placed the baby on the single, lumpy bed. The blanket was thin, patched in three places, but warmed by the afternoon sun. The child made a soft noise, half whimper, half sigh. Exhausted. Hungry. Trusting.
Shen Yuan sat on the floor. Then he slid forward, knees folding under him, and let his upper body collapse onto the edge of the bed. His face rested on the rough, worn mattress, close enough that their breaths mingled.
He didn’t touch the baby; he didn’t trust himself to. But being close was enough. The tiny puffs of warm air from the baby’s mouth brushed against his cheek, smelling faintly sweet, faintly milky. Innocent in a way that made something in his chest twist painfully.
The baby stirred, blinked awake, and looked at him with unfocused dark eyes. He reached out with a small hand — soft, chubby, still warm from sleep — and touched Shen Yuan’s face while he was humming a lullaby to the baby.
The fingers were damp.
Tears.
Shen Yuan froze. Whose tears? He opened his eyes. His vision blurred. Oh.
His.
Ridiculous. Shameful. He was an adult. Adults didn’t cry. Not over job hunting, not over hunger, not over exhaustion, and definitely not because a bunch of strangers called him unlucky.
But he was tired. So tired his bones felt hollow. So tired that his body had decided to leak without permission. He closed his eyes. The baby’s hand stayed on his cheek, patting clumsily, as if trying to soothe him. As if the infant somehow sensed his collapse and wanted to return to comfort.
The thought broke him all over again.
He stayed like that: kneeling on the hard packed earth floor, the cold seeping into his joints, pain blooming sharp under his kneecaps. He welcomed it. He deserved it, didn’t he? A useless parent who couldn’t even find a simple job? Who couldn’t protect or provide?
He pressed his forehead gently into the bedding, breathing in the faint scent of soap and milk, and let himself fall asleep kneeling at the foot of the bed. Half in pain, half in guilt, and entirely unwilling to pull himself away from the only warm thing in his world.
The next day was just as miserable as the last. No job. No prospects. Not even a pitying glance. At this point, Shen Yuan was convinced the Heavens themselves were laughing at him. The System certainly was.
But then (miracle of miracles) something happened.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, eating his precious bowl of watery rice at the lowered table. The rice was warm, thin, and barely food, but it was his, and he was disproportionately proud of it. It felt like luxury. Like triumph. Like maybe he wasn’t completely failing at this survival thing.
The baby lay on a cloth pallet on the ground nearby, kicking his little legs. Safe. Content. Well… mostly. “Ah. Ah!” the baby declared, with the confidence of someone who believed these noises carried the weight of a thousand commands.
Shen Yuan didn’t move. He glanced over, still chewing. “I hear you. I do. But A-Die is eating. For once.”
The baby did not care. The baby had never cared about anything Shen Yuan said. The baby only cared about the baby’s desires. Which, at this moment, was clearly: Look at me. The tiny creature huffed, unimpressed by Shen Yuan’s priorities. Then —
With all the fury and determination in his months-old body, he twisted.
Rolled his head and started to search for him.
And raised his head, little neck shaking from the effort, scanning the room until his big black eyes landed on Shen Yuan. When he found him, the baby pouted. Not a normal pout. A devastating, lip-wobbling, brow-scrunching, world-ending pout.
Shen Yuan froze mid-bite.
His spoon clattered. His jaw dropped.
He stared at his baby, horrified and awed and offended by the unfairness of it all. Then he gasped, voice cracking dramatically: “W – WAIT. DID YOU JUST—?? YOU —YOU?!”
The baby blinked slowly, then pouted harder, as if saying: Look at me, you fool. I am achieving milestones and you are EATING?
Joy crashed over Shen Yuan so quickly it almost knocked him flat. His baby rolled his head. His baby moved. His baby looked for him. His baby was growing.
And he hadn’t ruined everything, after all.
Forgetting entirely about his precious, warm bowl of watery rice, Shen Yuan let out a noise that could only be described as half–laugh, half–bewildered shriek. He scrambled to his feet so fast he nearly tripped on the edge of the mat.
“YOU LITTLE GENIUS!” he blurted, voice cracking in seventeen places. “YOU! SEARCHING FOR A DIE! YOU’RE A PRODIGY — A PEERLESS PRODIGY—AHHHH!”
The baby, startled but delighted by the sudden attention, squeaked as Shen Yuan scooped him up with both hands. They wobbled together for a moment, Shen Yuan nearly dropping him out of sheer excitement, before he hugged the baby close to his chest.
Then Shen Yuan started peppering his tiny face with kisses. Cheeks. Forehead. Squishy nose. Anywhere his overjoyed, trembling lips could reach. The baby giggled (actual giggles!) little mouth opening wide, eyes turning into crescents. Every laugh made Shen Yuan’s heart squeeze painfully, like the world was too bright for his chest to contain.
“My baby is learning!” Shen Yuan cried, spinning in a messy circle as he held the child high, like presenting an immortal treasure to the heavens. “You’re learning! You’re brilliant! You’re — oh no, you’re drooling —”
He kissed him anyway. He twirled again, bare feet skidding across the dirt floor, laughing until his ribs hurt. The baby laughed with him, gurgling, kicking, grabbing handfuls of Shen Yuan’s hair in triumphant baby fists.
And for the first time in months, Shen Yuan felt something warm and solid bloom inside him. Pride. Joy. Hope.
My baby is learning.
The next morning, Shen Yuan hit the streets with the blazing determination of a man who had witnessed his child perform a miracle and thus believed fate owed him one favor in return.
Still, every shopkeeper, every stall owner, every busybody auntie took one look at him, with his baby strapped to his chest, eyes bright with hope, and slammed the metaphorical door in his face.
Fine.
If honesty didn’t work, then Shen Yuan would simply lie through every pore of his being.
Thus began The Great Bullshit Campaign of Shen Yuan.
“Oh, my husband? Yes, he’s a hunter,” he said to the first interviewer, bowing demurely. “Works far from home. Dangerous job. Brings meat every few months. Very brave. Very strong. Very… away.”
To the next, he smiled, sweet and bashful. “We’re newlyweds. I’m still adjusting. He comes and goes like the wind. Ah, that’s the life of a heroic man, right?”
To the third, he gently bounced his baby. “Ah yes, my family is waiting at home. Very supportive. Big clan. Very loud. So many relatives. You know how it is.”
Then, leaning in with wide, innocent eyes, he whispered, “This cutie? You see how adorable he is? How could he not have a huge family? We are thinking of giving him younger siblings.”
The baby blinked at the owner, drooled onto its bib, and made the softest “mrrf” sound.
That sealed it.
After the illuminating day of interviews of expertly woven nonsense, he finally found a job. A realistic, era-appropriate job for a pretty, clever young “newlywed mother” in ancient China: He became an assistant at a fairly big herbal medicine shop. A fancy apothecary inside the city walls. He wasn’t qualified enough and nobody trusted him with expensive ingredients, but when he was talking to a bustling street corner, an elderly herb seller named Old Madam Zhang looked him up and down, squinted at his baby, and sniffed.
“You look clean,” she said.
“Ah — thank you?” Shen Yuan blinked.
“You have a calm voice. Good for reading prescriptions.”
“Ah — do I?”
“You have a face customers will stare at instead of yelling.”
“…Thank you?”
“And you’re small. Perfect. You can crawl under the stall to fetch jars without knocking anything over.”
“…Thank — wait.”
She waved a hand sharply. “Two strings of copper cash a day. Simple tasks. You keep track of herbs, grind roots, package powders, and help me read the labels because my eyes are going blind. Baby stays on your chest as long as it doesn’t scream.”
Shen Yuan blinked. Then bowed so quickly his forehead almost hit the counter. “Yes! I can do that! I can do ALL of that!”
Old Madam Zhang gave a noncommittal grunt. “Pretty people always talk big. We’ll see.”
But Shen Yuan didn’t care. He had a job. An actual job.
One using his brain. One where being smart and beautiful wasn’t a curse. One where he could sit in the shade instead of baking in the sun with the baby. A miracle. A genuine miracle.
And as he stepped behind the stall, baby strapped to his chest like the world’s cutest accessory, he whispered to him: “We did it, little guy. Your papa is officially employed.”
The baby burped triumphantly.
The Heavens, at long last, showed mercy.
So he was now an apothecary. Well… not exactly. Not a real apothecary. More like a low-level herbal assistant, wedged somewhere between “shop decoration” and “manual laborer with pretty handwriting.” But a job was a job, and Shen Yuan would take it with the dignity of a starving raccoon discovering a free lunch.
And of course — of course — Shen Yuan knew every herb in PIDW’s entire medicinal arsenal. Every herb. Every mushroom. Every root, flower, poisonous leaf, and strangely glowing sprout. If a plant existed in the fictional world he’d read, he had memorized its uses, side effects, toxicity, cultivation habits, AND which protagonist it would eventually cure, kill, or emotionally traumatize.
And beasts? He knew those too. Every spiritual beast, demonic beast, spirit-demonic hybrid, rare mutation, and weird plot-convenient creature Luo Binghe accidentally picked up on the side of the road. Shen Yuan had read it all. Twice. Three times during insomnia periods.
If Old Madam Zhang had known this, she probably would’ve bowed to him like a deity of medicinal trivia. But she didn’t know. Yet.
On the first day, she pointed at a bundle of dried leaves. “Girl, this is bitter sage. Count ten leaves, tie them with twine.”
Shen Yuan looked at it. Bitter sage (Ku Ye Cao): calms heart fire, reduces fever, bitter taste, mild narcotic effect if boiled too long, extremely flammable when dry, used by Luo Binghe in chapter 157 to cauterize—
“Ten, count ten!” Madam Zhang snapped.
“Ah — right! Yes, ten.”
He quickly counted, trying not to recite the entire herb description like a deranged encyclopedia.
Next, she pointed at a jar. “This is powdered deer antler. Used for —”
“Kidney deficiency, yang replenishment, male vitality, stamina boosts, expensive scams,” Shen Yuan said automatically.
Madam Zhang squinted at him. “…You read?”
“Ah — yes?” he said, sweating. “A little?”
She grunted again. “Hm. Useful.”
Over the course of the morning, she kept testing him. “What is this root?”
“White peony. Blood-nourishing. Bitter. Helps with cramps.”
“These?”
“Golden needles. Poisonous if fresh, safe when dried, don’t let anyone eat the soft ones — they’ll die.”
“This one?”
“Spiritwort. Boosts qi circulation. Luo Binghe used it as —”
“Who?”
“No one. A… friend. My — my husband. My hunter husband.”
By the time afternoon arrived, Madam Zhang had fallen into a quiet, pleased silence. A rare thing. A valuable thing. Shen Yuan would treasure it forever.She gave a grudging nod. “You’re competent.”
Shen Yuan glowed like a man receiving his first A+ in high school. The baby, strapped to his chest, gurgled approvingly. Shen Yuan felt something float up in his chest… Confidence. Maybe this world wasn’t going to chew him up completely. Maybe he could carve a life here. He had a job. He had a baby. He had herbal knowledge that could casually outmatch half the city.
“What's the name of the babe?” Old Madam Zhang asked suddenly.
Her voice cut through the quiet morning like a bamboo flute’s note; soft but unmistakable. The sun had not yet reached its peak; it slanted warm gold through the slatted stall walls, catching dust motes drifting lazily in the air.
Shen Yuan paused mid-wipe, a jar half-polished in his hands.
The baby was nestled against his chest, half-asleep, warm and soft and trusting. Black eyes peeked up at him from time to time, thoughtful in that silent baby way that made him feel far more judged than any infant had the right to make a man feel.
A name.
He hadn’t given him one. Not really. He’d been too busy panicking, too busy failing, too busy surviving.
But the system — the cursed, unhelpful system — had whispered something the day he arrived in this world. A truth he had shoved far away: [This baby is Shen Qingqiu by the way.]
Shen Yuan inhaled. Looked down. Looked into those dark eyes. Black. Deep. Glossy. Like carved stone. Like polished night. Like black jade. His heart squeezed in a way he absolutely did not appreciate. He swallowed and said quietly, with more reverence than he meant: “Shen Jiu. 沈玖.” He chose the character 玖 the precious stone. old and auspicious, used for rare gemstones. Something treasured.
Old Madam Zhang stilled. Her wrinkled eyes softened, just a little, before thoughtful depth filled them. “玖… Jiu” she repeated, tasting the word like fine tea. “A stone of value. Dark, unblemished, enduring.” She bowed her head slightly toward the child. “A good name. A noble one. A child who bears 玖 will grow unyielding. Hard to break. Harder to replace.” Her gaze flicked to Shen Yuan, sharp as a carving knife. “Treasure him well. A rare stone, if dropped, shatters only once.”
The baby cooed.
Shen Yuan clutched him a little tighter.
“How did the hundred-day celebration go?” Old Madam Zhang asked after a pause, voice deceptively mild as she rearranged a basket of dried roots.
Shen Yuan froze.
The cloth he was using to clean a jar slipped from his fingers. His mind went blank. The hundred-day banquet. The one that symbolized health, luck, protection from evil spirits, and family prosperity. He had, of course, done no such thing. He’d barely managed not to cry himself to sleep every night for the first month.
But he couldn’t say that.
He also couldn’t claim it was lavish or auspicious. Not when he and the baby lived outside the city walls like two raccoons hiding in a shed. He inhaled. He lied.
“Oh — it was small,” he began, cautiously. “Just… intimate. Modest.”
Old Madam Zhang arched an eyebrow. “Mm.”
Encouraged by the noncommittal sound, Shen Yuan plunged deeper into the abyss. “My clan came,” he said, hoping the Heavens wouldn’t strike him dead for summoning imaginary relatives. “Some cousins, an aunt… siblings. They brought sweet rice cakes and a red thread bracelet for him.”
Old Madam Zhang hummed again, neither believing nor disbelieving. “And your husband?” she asked, tapping her cane lightly against the wooden floor.
Ah. Yes. His tragically brave, extremely fictional husband, the wandering hunter. “Of course he came,” Shen Yuan said smoothly. “Wouldn’t miss it. He's… ah… not very expressive, but he held the baby for a long time.”
The image of Luo Binghe, the Emperor Luo Binghe, trying to hold a baby flashed through his mind. Shen Yuan nearly choked.
“And?” Madam Zhang pressed.
“And —” he continued, voice gaining confidence as he wove the tapestry of nonsense, “he brought a pouch of dried venison as a gift, since we couldn’t afford anything extravagant. The neighbors shared a pot of longevity noodles with us. It was… humble, but warm.” He added a tiny sigh for realism. “Very simple. But it felt full.”
Old Madam Zhang looked at him for a long, heavy moment. Eyes sharp enough to slice through pork hide. Then she nodded. “Simple is best,” she said at last. “Grand feasts drown sincerity. Good parents celebrate with their hearts, not their wallets.”
Shen Yuan relaxed a fraction.
Then she added, in the same even tone: “And good liars keep their eyes steady. Yours flickered twice.”
He choked on air. “W–what—”
But she had already turned away, arranging herbs with the air of someone who had decided to tolerate his nonsense as long as he remained useful.
The baby, still strapped to his chest, let out a happy humm, as if congratulating him on surviving yet another social disaster.
Shen Yuan thought to himself: I’m never lying to an elderly woman again.
That also was a lie. He absolutely would.
After a few hours, Old Madam Zhang vanished somewhere into the back storeroom with the efficiency of a shadow. Shen Yuan was restocking a shelf of dried herbs, baby Shen Jiu bundled against his chest, when Old Master Zhang appeared at the doorway.
He cleared his throat.
That was already alarming. Old Master Zhang rarely spoke unless he intended to do something decisive, like banish evil spirits, bargain down unreasonable wholesalers, or intimidate unruly apprentices into repenting their life choices.
“You. Come,” he said.
Shen Yuan stiffened. “Ah — y–yes, Master?”
The old man didn’t explain, simply turned and walked. Shen Yuan scrambled after him, clutching the baby and praying to any deity available that he wasn’t about to be fired.
Old Master Zhang was just like the Madam: quiet, stone-faced, and allergic to nonsense. He walked with his hands behind his back, glancing every so often at the bundled baby. Each time, he made a low “hmm” sound in his throat. Not approving. Not disapproving. Just… evaluating.
By the time they reached the Zhang family’s main residence, Shen Yuan’s nerves were frayed like cheap rope. He followed through a clean stone courtyard, a tall wooden hall, and finally into a modest but impeccably kept dining room.
And stopped.
On the table sat a single bowl of longevity noodles. Steam curled upward in soft spirals. The smell — warm broth, scallions, hand-pulled dough — hit him like a blow.
Old Madam Zhang was already sitting at the low table. Old Master Zhang stood behind the other cushion, waiting. The two of them looked at him. Tilted their heads. Said nothing.
Shen Yuan blinked rapidly.
It wasn’t a feast. It wasn’t even a celebration. Just a bowl. A simple one. But his throat tightened, breath catching on something raw and unguarded.
It had been months since he’d eaten noodles. Months since he’d sat at a table that wasn’t wobbly and half-rotted. Months since anyone had shown him something soft, something not demanded, not traded, not earned through desperate effort.
Kindness.
Even plain kindness burned.
His eyes stung. He tried to swallow it down, but the warmth in the room made it rise higher up his chest, into his nose, behind his eyes.
Old Master Zhang finally spoke.“You lied,” he said simply. Shen Yuan froze. Old Madam Zhang added, “But the child is alive, strong, and clearly well-kept.” They both gestured toward the noodles. “Eat.”
Shen Yuan’s composure snapped like a dry twig.
He sank onto the cushion in silence, hands trembling as he reached for the bowl. Baby Shen Jiu gurgled against his chest, little fingers patting at him as if encouraging him to eat faster.
The first mouthful almost undid him.
The noodles were hand-pulled, soft, and perfectly chewy. The broth was rich but not heavy. Warmth spread through his empty stomach, then seeped further — into his ribcage, his shoulders, his tired aching bones.
The Zhang elders didn’t comment. They didn’t need to.
It wasn’t a party. But it was warm. And it was good.
Far too good.