Chapter Text
They say hope dies last.This is it. It’s dead. You killed it, Airplane, you hack.
I frankly don’t know why I still had hope left for wife #318. Oh no, wait, it was because she’s intelligent and ambitious and a great lawyer! She could actually keep up with Binghe. They were having conversations! A novelty.
Of course, then happens what always happens. She gets to know the heavenly pillar before she even finishes getting to know Binghe. He pushes her down, wham bam, job done, and promptly loses all interest in her.
Why does this happen every time, Airplane-bro?
By now, Bingge is just treating the love interests like short-time jobs. On to the next adventure! Does he even remember he still has those other 317 wives?It’s obvious Binghe has some serious commitment issues because of the abuse you put him through.
But you know what? Never mind that. What I would really like to know: Why does none of those wives, not a single one, make the effort of actually getting to know Binghe after the marriage? All they ever seek him out for is to complain, ask for things or have another date with Little Binghe (yes, yes, I know).
Can’t they see that what he really needs isn’t more mind-numbingly mechanical sex, but some affection? Someone who actually cares about him and not what he can do for them?
That won’t happen if you keep having the love interests jump into bed with him the first chance they get!The way this trash fire of a novel is going? I can only see this end in tragedy.
Peerless Cucumber
It was too early to wake up, he was sure of that. Sun? Definitely only an imaginary construct to make people believe they need to get up and go to work. He wouldn’t give in to the brainwashing, not him!
Shen Yuan rolled over and pressed his face into the pillow, sniffing contentedly.
That was the moment he realised what had woken him.
It smelled like roses.
His room didn’t smell like roses. His room smelled like instant noodles and disinfectant.
The next moment, he almost fell out of bed at the sudden appearance of a voice.
[Activation code: “End in tragedy” Installation at 15%... 30%... 35%... 46%... 50%... 99%... Installation finished. System activated.]
“What?” Shen Yuan said and spit hair out of his mouth. Wait, why was there-
[Welcome, valued user, to the system! This system operates in line with the design concept ‘HAPPY WIFE, HAPPY LIFE!’ We try to provide you with the best possible experience! It is our sincere wish that, during your stay, you will be able to fulfil your desire and provide the protagonist with care and affection and, eventually, find true love! We hope you enjoy this adventure!]
Shen Yuan had read too many transmigration novels in his life to make beginner mistakes. His first reaction was to look around if someone else was in the room, watching him.
No one. He was alone.
Assured that he didn’t need to do some quick thinking, he took a look around. His bed was a wooden platform construct and, for a moment, he experienced a bout of vertigo at sitting on something he had only ever seen in museums before. Shen Yuan leaned forward to look past the white silk curtains hanging from the roof and saw that the whole room was kept in light colours, white and cream and subtle flower patterns everywhere.
And yes, it smelled strongly of roses.
A 'ding' made him whip his head around. His eyes fell on a floating, blue box near his feet. A chatbox. Writing appeared as soon as the voice spoke again.
[Role bound: Luo Binghe's wife number 243, 'Hei Ruqian.' Weapon: the fans Huo Yu and Qing Xue. Starting B-points: 100!]
"Luo Binghe? Don't tell me-"
[Luo Binghe is the protagonist of Proud Immortal Demon Way, the world user Shen Yuan is now a part of!]
Was this supposed to be a joke? He transmigrated into this worthless piece of-
Wait.
"Did you just say wife."
[User is correct!]
Full of trepidation, Shen Yuan looked down at himself. The first thing his eyes fell on was a pair of full breasts, barely hidden by a thin robe.
He looked back up.
"No," he said to the glowing box. "No, I'm not doing this." He laid back down. "Send me back."
[This system regrets to inform you that your former body, unfortunately, expired:( User Shen Yuan has this system's condolences.]
He sat back up so quickly that his head spun. "Are you telling me I'm dead?"
[User is correct!]
"Are you kidding me?" he screeched. He winced and cleared his throat. "How did I even die?"
The system stayed silent for a long moment. Then it said: [This system is not authorised to answer your question.]
Shen Yuan shook his head sharply, feeling strangely hot. He suddenly couldn’t bear to keep sitting on this bed, so he stood up and started to pace the room. The chatbox followed beside him. “I’m not dead. Listen, there’s no reason for me to be dead. I was healthy for once, I didn’t eat anything bad, I even went outside sometimes!”
[This system reminds the user that the human body is a fragile construct that can easily stop functioning for any reason.]
Shen Yuan spun around and yelled: “This is not how it wor-” He broke off and closed his eyes. After a deep breath, he sat down on the bed again, his elbows braced on his knees, and looked at the floor.
Fuck.
If the system really wasn’t lying, if he was really lying somewhere, dead, then it would take several days for anyone to find him. And it would most likely be his Meimei who did.
The thought of her face when she found his rotting corpse made bile rise in his throat. She’d have to tell the rest of their family too. He imagined them, all sitting around his parents’ kitchen table, hearing that he’d died in his shitty little apartment. There were probably empty ramen boxes on his desk and dirty boxer shorts all over his floor. He’d have cleaned up before he died, had he known beforehand.
God, Er-ge would completely flip. Shen Yuan could just see him, stomping through his room and kicking the garbage lying around, talking about how it was no wonder he’d died, seeing how he couldn’t even take care of himself.
And his mother would talk about organising the funeral, what to tell their friends and generally drive everybody crazy. But then, at night, she’d sit in the kitchen, alone and crying into her tea. Shen Yuan felt his eyes grow a little hot at the thought.
What had he even done with his life? Sitting around and reading bad porn all day? He should have tried harder, done more. Visited his family more.
He wished he could have told his family that he loved them one more time.
Shen Yuan took a moment to just breathe until the burning behind his eyes stopped. There was nothing he could do now. He could only make the best out of the situation he was in. He had gotten another chance, somehow. Maybe he wouldn’t be an utter disappointment in this life at least.
He looked up at the empty chatbox.
“Okay. I’m not sure I believe you, for all I know I’ve fainted and this is a strange fever dream, but okay. I guess I have no choice but to go along with this for now.”
The system played a GIF of a woman clapping with confetti surrounding her. Shen Yuan took another deep breath so he wouldn’t start yelling again.
“So, what should I do now?”
[This system suggests user Shen Yuan gets dressed, first of all.]
Right. Revealing sleeping robe. His eyes alighted on a wardrobe in the corner of the room. Shen Yuan strode over, pointedly ignoring how strange this new body felt, and opened it to look at his options.
Well. At least there wasn’t any pink. Most of these robes were white or at least kept in pale colours, just like the rest of the room. If he was honest, it reminded him uncomfortably of the hospital.
It could have been worse, he told himself as he stared at the silks. He could have transmigrated into the Old Palace Master, forever cursed with back pains. Or worse, into Shen Qingqiu. He liked his arms and legs. And at least, as a wife, he’d be fairly safe from any harm. Other than wife plots, of course.
He took out the plainest looking robe, an off-white affair with subtle white flower embroidery that would cover up everything he'd rather not think about.
Admittedly, it could have been better too. If it had to be a wife, why not Liu Mingyan? Sha Hualing? Ning Yingying, even? Instead, he had transmigrated into the most forgettable wife ever. He tried to remember her from the book, but nothing came to mind.
Oh well. Time to undress this body. Shen Yuan took the robe with him behind a screen partition.
He laid the robe on the little stool there and his fingers tugged on the tie of his sleeping robe. Shen Yuan could feel the blood draining from his face.
He could not do it. He wasn’t some kind of pervert, undressing a woman he didn’t even know! She hadn’t given her consent for this! Shen Yuan wasn’t into dubcon!
A chilling thought occurred to him. “System?” The system made another ‘ding’ and the chatbox popped up beside him. “She, uh, what did you say her name was?”
[User is currently in the body of Hei Ruqian.]
“Right, right. She isn’t still… around, is she?”
[Character Hei Ruqian is dead.]
“Oh.”
Wait. “How did she die?”
[This system is not authorised to answer your question.]
“No, of course, you’re not,” Shen Yuan snarked. “It really wouldn’t do to give a useful answer for once.”
[This system can answer many questions user Shen Yuan might want to ask.]
“Can you now,” he muttered, staring at the ribbon that kept the sleeping robe shut. Well, if she was dead, then it didn’t really matter anymore, did it? This was Shen Yuan’s body now, even if he would prefer it wasn’t. He needed to take the plunge eventually.
Shen Yuan resolutely stared at the wall in front of him and took off the robe. Done!
Now he only needed to… He blindly felt around for the underrobe, but eventually had to turn his eyes away from the wall to find it and got a good eyeful of boobs for his troubles.
With the underrobe in hand, he closed his eyes and sighed. Alright, whatever. It was time. Please forgive this unworthy idiot, Miss Hei!
He opened his eyes and took a good look at himself. Boobs. No dick. Surprisingly muscular, he noticed. Curvy. Certainly worthy of being a wife of Luo Binghe, but not how he had ever wanted to look.
That was enough. He quickly pulled on the underrobe and tied it shut. He could think more about his new body another time.
After a few long minutes of struggling with the other layers, he realised that he needed help.
“System? How the hell do I get these robes on?”
[This system is happy to help!]
With its assistance, he managed to dress and breathed a sigh of relief when he was completely covered.
Shen Yuan stepped out from behind the screen and walked to the dressing table to look at his face in the bronze mirror there. “Alright then, if you’re so helpful, can you tell me who Hei Ruqian actually is? Because I’ve tried and I just can’t remember her.”
[Hei Ruqian, wife number 243, appeared in chapter 328 in which she and Luo Binghe fought a pair of giant spider bats. Hei Ruqian came in contact with the venom of one of them and had to be saved by Luo Binghe.]
The giant spider bats! He remembered those. Delightfully creepy creatures, with the long, thin legs of a spider and the hairy body and wings of a bat. Shen Yuan vaguely remembered that there had been a maiden involved who needed saving, but mostly because most plots had a maiden that needed saving.
“Hm, anything special about her?”
[Hei Ruqian was a cultivator in the Middle Core Formation Stage. She gave up her cultivation after marrying Luo Binghe. Her family is fairly wealthy and they approved of her marriage to Emperor Luo. She has a talent for embroidery!]
Shen Yuan looked at Hei Ruqian in the mirror. Her eyebrows were furrowed in consternation. “You had a perfectly good cultivation base and you just gave it up? I don’t want to disrespect the dead, but that was just stupid.”
He considered her face. Pretty, of course, all of Bingge’s wives were pretty. But not the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, the way most of the wives had been described in PIDW. Dark eyes that looked strangely soft, black, silken hair falling to his waist, delicate features. Maybe even beautiful.
Still, it was the face of a stranger and Shen Yuan felt like an imposter as his own facial expressions played out on it.
He would need to do something about the hair. Women in ancient China didn’t exactly run around with open hair. Or maybe they did, seeing that this was the cheap fantasy version of ancient China and the author evidently didn’t care about historical accuracy.
Shen Yuan was fighting his long hair with a comb and ribbons when the door opened. He quickly ripped the crooked ornament out of his hair and tried to look impassive.
A woman with a tray entered. She was wearing black servant robes and had a vaguely bored expression on her face. With a start, Shen Yuan saw that, what he had at first thought to be a strange hairstyle, were in fact two black horns growing from her head and curling around her ears.
As she stepped further into the room, shining letters appeared above her head.
[‘Kuai Ya’, Hei Ruqian's maid and one of the demons working for Luo Binghe.]
Kuai Ya's eyebrows raised when she saw Shen Yuan sitting at the dressing table. "Madam is already dressed?"
What was that supposed to mean? Wasn't it already late morning? Shen Yuan looked to the window he had so far ignored and the sunshine falling into the room.
The maid set the tray down on the table and walked over to Shen Yuan. With deft movements, she grabbed his hair and started to comb it.
Shen Yuan sat on his chair, frozen, as she harshly styled his hair into an updo. He could feel the warmth of her belly behind his head. When was the last time he had been touched by anyone but his Meimei and occasionally his mother's hand on his cheek? He couldn't remember.
After she was done, she stepped back and busied herself with the tray, leaving him trying to unfreeze his body again.
"Is Madam not going to eat?" the demon maid asked, standing beside the table with her hands clasped behind her back.
Could you possibly sound more bored, Shen Yuan wanted to ask. Anime had lied to him, having a demon maid wasn't fun at all!
He swallowed down the snark and sat down at the table. The woman poured him tea and stood back again. Heavens, seeing how displeased she looked, Shen Yuan hoped the tea wasn't poisoned.
Actually, was she really going to keep standing there while he ate? How could that be called a stress-free meal?
"Thanks," he said, in the hopes she'd take the cue and leave.
No such luck. She just turned her bored look to the window.
Well. Then he'd eat like this, no problem at all! He lifted the spoon and took a hearty bite of the congee.
His taste buds were drowned in bland mediocrity.
What was that? It certainly wasn't Luo Binghe's cooking!
Shen Yuan wanted to cry tears of blood. Ah, he had always suspected that Bingge couldn't possibly cook for all of his wives every day. But still, he had to admit that this was slightly disappointing.
Listlessly, he ate the rest of the congee under the uncaring eyes of his maid.
When she took the bowl away and set the empty dishes on the tray, Shen Yuan decided to make some conversation. But he needed to be careful. She couldn't realise he wasn't Hei Ruqian.
“Nice weather, isn’t it? I might go on a walk today.”
She looked at him from the corner of her eyes for a second before she turned away again, lifted the tray and left the room silently.
Well. This had gone horribly.
Shen Yuan desperately wanted to give a bad rating. One of five stars, wouldn’t recommend! Did she hate her job or what had that been? Where was her work ethic, seriously?
Shen Yuan puffed up his cheeks and walked over to the window. Wasn’t the palace located in the demon realm? Might as well see what he was dealing with.
An enormous courtyard sprawled out beneath the windows, made out of pale stone that shone in the sunlight. Ancient red-wooded trees dotted the square, their canopy throwing long shadows. A few women were strolling underneath them in pairs and Shen Yuan leaned on the windowsill to watch them.
He had to admit, this wasn’t what he had imagined while reading the book. When he had read that the palace was located underground, in the demon realm, he had always imagined a dreary, dark place, only illuminated by the reddish glow of fires. Who would have known that the sun was shining even here? How did that work, anyway? Was it a fake sun? Was the demon realm, in reality, another world, rather than just underground?
Shen Yuan watched as two pairs of women crossed each other underneath a tree and came to a halt to exchange a few words. They were too far away for him to hear what they were saying, but Shen Yuan had a pretty good idea anyway when one of the four abruptly drew a fan to cover her face and ripped her arm out of the other woman’s hold to storm away. After that, the remaining three soon separated too.
Tensions were high in the harem, Shen Yuan knew. It seemed like, every time Bingge was home for more than a week, Airplane would use the opportunity to write some dirty harem intrigue. The wives were poisoning, bullying and tricking each other left and right attempting to rise in the hierarchy. And Luo Binghe only ever intervened when someone was in actual mortal danger. Everything else seemed to be fair game.
Shen Yuan sighed. What an exhausting lifestyle. And so pointless too. It wasn’t as if Binghe cared. Couldn’t they see that he would never choose an Empress? And, even if he did, it sure wouldn’t be because a woman had bullied her way to the top.
Still, he kind of wanted to go down there and meet a few wives. Maybe he would even meet Liu Mingyan or Sha Hualing! See if their fabled beauty was really as breathtaking as described.
Excitement at the idea started to fill him and he was already halfway to the door when something occurred to him.
There were surely people out there who knew Hei Ruqian. His maid hadn’t seemed to care, but the original goods might have had some friends among the harem members. And Shen Yuan still didn’t know all that much about her.
His eyes wandered around the room. He could ask the system but, frankly, he wanted to save that for when he didn’t have any other options left. Shen Yuan didn’t want to grow too dependent on it.
No, he would do it the legitimate way and search her room for clues first. There had to be some personal items hidden somewhere.
He walked aimlessly around at first. Where would Hei Ruqian hide things? Under the bed?
He knelt down and saw that there was indeed a drawer there. Shen Yuan opened it but there were only extra blankets inside. He went through them and crowed in triumph when he saw something colourful peek out from underneath all the blankets.
It turned out to be a robe embroidered with colourful birds and flowers, a needle still stuck in the cloth. Well, that certainly confirmed the system’s claims of Hei Ruqian being talented at embroidery but wasn’t of much use to him otherwise. He carefully laid it back where he found it and turned to the bedstand instead.
No luck either. The only things he found there were a few ribbons, a perfume flask, the culprit of the pervasive rose scent, and a strange little tin with a clear gel inside. Confused, he dipped a finger inside and brought it up to his nose to smell it. It didn’t smell like anything. Was this moisturiser? He shrugged and set it back down.
Hm, where else could he look? Maybe he could try the wardrobe. He opened it and parted the robes hanging there.
He wished Airplane had written wardrobes with lighting into this world. He had to squint a little but finally found what looked like a hidden compartment at the bottom. Hei Ruqian needed to try harder if she wanted to keep secrets from Shen Yuan!
Giddy, he pulled on a little string to open the compartment. And, indeed, there was a secret bottom! He blindly grabbed everything he could feel down there and pulled it out of the dark wardrobe onto the ground in front of it.
Well, if this wasn’t a veritable treasure, he thought as he smirked down at the small heap of secrets.
First, Shen Yuan inspected the two hand fans on the side. They both were hidden in soft, pale brown leather sleeves. He drew one out and it snapped open with a clink, sharp silver blades peeking out from sturdy blue leaves. Ohoho, he could eviscerate someone with that!
“System, are those Hei Ruqian’s spiritual weapons?”
[User is correct! These are the fans Huo Yu and Qing Xue.]
Shen Yuan looked up and snorted when he saw the characters. Fire Rain and Pure Snow? Had Hei Ruqian been in her teenage emo phase when she named them?
He inspected the fans again and, indeed, one had subtle silver flame patterns, while the other had delicate silver snowflakes drawn onto the fan leaves.
Tentatively, he took Qing Xue into his hand. When he held it, he could feel a strange sort of energy running through his body and collecting in his hands. Hm. What if he…
Shen Yuan held it in front of him and swiped it straight down through the air. For one moment, he thought nothing had happened. Then the vase on the nightstand across the room fell to the ground, cleanly cut in half.
“...System,” he said. “Didn’t you say that Hei Ruqian gave up on her cultivation?”
[This system is only required to give the official version of events. (¬‿¬) ]
Appalled, Shen Yuan stared at the kaomoji. “Are you serious? How do I know what’s the truth then?”
[User will just have to find out for himself!]
So basically, he couldn’t trust that anything he knew from reading the book was real. Go figure.
He laid the fans aside for now and turned his eyes to the other things he had unearthed from the wardrobe. A child’s rattle that had small flowers painted on the wooden surface, a single piece of paper with a poem written on it, something sappy about stars and a pond, and a thick stack of letters.
Curious, Shen Yuan pried the bindings holding the stack together apart.
‘To our daughter,’ the first letter read.
Oh, they were letters from Hei Ruqian’s parents. Should he read them? In any other situation, he wouldn’t have gone through the personal belongings of a dead person, but in this case… well, he might need the information in the future! Better to be as prepared as possible.
‘You have been married to the Emperor for almost two years now,’ it continued, ‘and we have yet to see any results from your conversation with his general. Are you making connections with important people? You shouldn’t spend all your time chatting with the other wives, many of them are beneath you anyways. Try to make nice with some of the demons under his command. Even a demon man wouldn’t say no to a gift from a pretty woman.’
Shen Yuan recoiled. What the heck was that? They were bullying her to lick the boots of every important person in the palace?
‘Please think about how much we invested into this marriage, just so you can have the opportunity to become something greater than we could ever be. Make sure to keep your husband happy, daughter. A bit of vulnerability and softness goes a long way with a man. The higher you rise in his estimation, the more power you will eventually have.
Hei Xiaoqu is happy enough with her new tutor, we hope that…’
Shen Yuan set the letter down before he ripped it apart in his fury. Sycophants! No, worse, cutthroat politicians! To suggest that she should use poor Binghe that way was really the lowest kind of vileness.
Frantically, he flipped through the other letters. They were all more or less the same, orders to make connections and undermine the other wives to rise in the hierarchy.
What was this kind of callous behaviour?
His angry internal rant was interrupted when he saw a letter in the middle of the stack. It had obviously been ripped apart before it had been smoothed out again and pinned onto another piece of paper. He felt himself deflate as he read it. It was even worse than the others, scolding Hei Ruqian for not making more progress and calling her unfilial. She had obviously ripped it to shreds, just as furious as he had been just a moment ago. And yet, she hadn’t burned or thrown it away either. Instead, she had taken care to preserve it.
Shen Yuan couldn’t quite explain the melancholy that came over him as he stared at the abused letter. To keep such a condescending, heartless thing as this, she must have been very lonely. Maybe she had missed her family, no matter how horrible they were. The fact that she had kept all the letters pointed to it.
Shen Yuan hugged his knees to his chest and stared out the window.
He would really rather not have known, but the truth was staring him right in the face. All of this didn’t look like the belongings of a woman who gave up her cultivation for a happy marriage. The fact that she kept her spiritual weapons, that her cultivation was evidently not neglected, her parents’ letters…
It looked more like the life of a woman who had planned to live as a cultivator but was forced into a marriage by her power-hungry parents.
His chest felt a bit tight. Maybe he shouldn’t have read the letters after all. Shen Yuan might have been the new owner of her body, but he could at least respect what remained of her privacy.
Slowly, he gathered the letters up again to return them to their hiding place, when his eyes caught on a sentence.
‘And on your husband’s nightly visits, make sure to wear the robes we sent you last…’
On your husband’s… nightly visits.
The letters slipped out of his hands and fell to the ground in a flurry.
Oh no, he had forgotten about the Heavenly Pillar.