itsthatlake - Tumblr blog

itsthatlake · 2 months ago

Text

I expanded on this on ao3, plus added some character guides

AO3 FIC LINK, because tumblr is being difficult and I can't figure out the square link thing lol

SJ's master is a transmigrator AU

Qing Jing Peak Lord Ao Huiju, through an artifact that shows him a vision of the faraway future, learns that the fate of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect is to be destroyed in an act of revenge upon a future Qing Jing Peak Lord and he becomes convinced that the only way to change the fate of this world is to bring someone from outside of it. After many years of searching, he finds a way to summon a being from another world.

Emma, a child of thirteen years from a modern, English-speaking country, wakes up in this world where she doesn’t speak the language, isn’t called by her real name, and only vaguely knows the culture from what she’s seen in historical Chinese dramas despite her own grandparents being Chinese as well. Ao Huiju names her Fu Tianci, convinced that she’s a god child after he realizes she’s speaking and writing in the Heavenly Language and Heavenly Script, and he forces her to behave as a Qing Jing disciple.

Emma fights him every step of the way, confused and scared and feral, so he quickly starts punishing her to get her to obey. He’s already decided that she’ll be his successor, she just needs to stop messing around and step up to the role. And, despite everything, she does excel. Having done gymnastics and dance classes for years, she quickly takes to martial arts as well; music comes naturally to her; spiritual cultivation is not difficult once she gets the hang of it; she’s always been clever and persistent, so strategy is one of her strong suits too; and calligraphy and painting are her worst subjects but the arrays and seals are fun to play around with regardless, so she gets plenty of practice.

But all the while, she keeps fighting her master. She hates him. She masters the art of malicious compliance with him, learns how to act and react accordingly, figures out how to make him tick. Ao Huiju is not a patient man exactly, he’s strict and doesn’t like when things don’t go according to his plans. He punishes her more often than not, and she learns to take it, because she’s long since figured out that there’s only so much he can do to hurt her and she will always be the winner the moment she makes him lose his temper.

And, of course, she refuses to teach him Heavenly Script, or English, the moment she realizes how much he wants to know. She won’t even translate things for him, no matter the threat of punishment if she doesn’t. This is the one thing she will always have the satisfaction of holding over him. And she will always play dumb and innocent if someone else questions her, because how could she possibly know Heavenly Script? That’s the language of the gods! And even if she had known it as a child, which she will deny forever, it’s hard to remember, you know?

After so many punishments and whatnots, she becomes a regular at Qian Cao Peak. Mo Xia, the head disciple, becomes her go-to healer. She was the first person Fu Tianci befriended in this world, the first to treat her with any kind of kindness, the only one to try to reassure her when she was just a scared child.

She’s seventeen when she has her first qi deviation. Ao Huiju finds out that she still has her old clothes she transmigrated in, including the beanie her mother had hand-knitted for her, the jacket she and her sister had sewn patches on, and a custom-decorated pair of fingerless gloves her brother had gifted her for her birthday once. He even found the bead bracelets she had made with her friends ages ago, the one with her real name and theirs. All things that she’s kept hidden away for fear of losing them, comfort items and the only stuff she has from her home.

And, of course, he destroys them all, claiming that they’re only distractions and that she has a mission that’s far more important than these silly attachments. She should just forget about that world since she’s never going back. She screams as he’s destroying them, feeling like her home is being taken from her all over again, and attacks him. She throws herself at him, clawing and yelling, her qi making the air fly in whirlwinds around them. He subdues her easily, of course, but she doesn’t stop. She bites and kicks and cries and bleeds and feels her heart shatter all over again.

She has no idea what happens next, but she hears Ao Huiju snapping at her to get a hold of herself and feels her qi going out of control and burning her. When she wakes up, it’s on Qian Cao Peak. Mo Xia is there, and she holds her as she cries all over again about her lost stuff and the unfairness of it all and how much she hates it, all the way circulating cool qi through her meridians to try and calm her down and prevent another qi deviation.

When she goes back to her own peak, a few days later, it’s with the cold determination of killing her master. She’s too young, too weak right now, but one day, she will kill him. That’s a promise.

Years pass by.

She gets her sword, Ma Li, and officially becomes head disciple of her Qing Jing Peak. She meets the rest of her fellow head disciples through meetings and missions. Yang Ling from Qiong Ding, who seems to want to be head disciple as much as Fu Tianci does; Chao Hong from An Ding, who barely glances at anyone once before dismissing them entirely; Jiang Shuzi from Bai Zhan, with a restless energy to him that has her impatient for a fight just by being near for too long; Xiao Mei from Xian Shu, who seems to be judging her every move like it’s her job to be the snobbiest person on the sect.

Ao Huiju starts getting more and more pushy with her, paranoid that she’s not doing enough to change the fate of the sect as he runs out of time. There’s still a few decades left before their generation is meant to Ascend, but it doesn’t feel like enough for him and he takes it out on her like he’s always done, pressuring her to do better, be stronger, smarter, faster.

The Naming Ceremony ensues when she’s thirty-seven. By this point, it’s been almost two and a half decades since she last saw her family, since she was brought to this world against her will, and she’s never once stopped hating the man responsible, nor has she forgotten her promise to kill him. She’s spent longer in this world than she did in her hometown. She barely remembers her family’s faces or voices anymore, her friends’ names, the games they used to play. She only knows her real name or first language because she regularly repeats it, whispers it to herself at night when she’s alone, writes letters to her family that she burns before morning comes.

Ao Huiju names her ‘Anchen’. Safe dawn. She wishes she could refuse it, use her real name, but she knows she can’t. She couldn’t when he named her the first time and she can’t now that she’s getting a generational name alongside her martial siblings. In a few years, their masters will Ascend and they will take their places as leaders, whether they want to or not. She makes it through the ceremony with a calm facade that she’s spent years perfecting, and then goes to get drunk with Mo Xia, now Mo Anxia, because her master couldn’t even be bothered to think of a proper name for her.

In a few years, the Hui generation will Ascend. The highest honor for a cultivator, Ao Huiju’s told her many times. Fu Anchen, now a grown woman and a great cultivator in her own right, but still that same child who swore revenge twenty years ago, decides that enough is enough. Why should he get to have a happy ending when he took everything from her? When he abused her and used her for many years? When he’s the reason she couldn’t graduate with her friends, won’t get the chance to see her older sister’s paintings up on the town’s spring exhibit or her younger brother compete in those chest tournaments he’s always practicing for, won’t hear her mother’s silly jokes or her father’s belly-laughs ever again? Why should he be happy when he took her happiness away from her?

If he weren’t so paranoid, she’d drug his meals. If he were less wary, she’d inject him with poison in his sleep. But the man only eats socially and the closest thing to rest he does is meditating. He doesn’t touch artifacts he doesn’t know the use of, he doesn’t mess around with flora he’s not studied before. It’s annoying, but she knows she’ll have to wait for a better chance if she wants to do this right.

Because as much as she resents being taken from her home, the life she’s built for herself here isn’t too terrible. She considers Mo Anxia her best friend. Jiang Shuzi, now Jiang Anying, is genuinely fun to be around. She enjoys her time on the peak, around her fellow disciples, whom she’s grown fond of over the years. She loves spending time with the little ones, teaching them what she knows and playing with them under the guise of training. Her life isn’t bad. And she refuses to lose anything else to Ao Huiju.

So she waits, and eventually a mission requires the peak lord to leave the mountain. So close to their Ascension, it should be her carrying out these missions. In most of the other peaks it’s definitely the succeeding disciples doing them. But Ao Huiju, despite his insistence that she needs to change the fate of the world, has never actually trusted her with anything he could do himself. It’s odd and even contradictory, but the man is way too paranoid and proud to ever let her act on her own if he can help it. Perhaps it’s the many years she spent actively sabotaging everything he asked her to do, perhaps it’s just one last attempt at influencing the world around them. Either way, it gives her the perfect opportunity to enact her plan.

She offers to go with him, since she’s been meaning to study the flora of that territory for some time now, and he reluctantly allows it. The place they’re going to is well into the demon realm, an isolated area full of demonic beasts. Not the kind of place you would catch a cultivator off guard. But it’s precisely due to this that she knows she’ll complete her goal. After all, when you’re so focused on outside threats, you don’t expect an attack from your only ally.

They’re in the middle of a fight with a herd of Blue-Horned Poison Bulls when it happens. She gets out of range, engaged in her own fight, when she sees an opening and directs the pair she’s fighting towards where Ao Huiju is holding off against a few of them. It’s easy to send a surprise attack to make him lose his balance, easier still to stay back as he gets attacked by the herd.

The thing about the Blue-Horned Poison Bull is that it’s very aptly named. Its horns are full of poison that they release upon contact, specifically a kind of poison that attacks the meridians. Sure, they move in herds of four or five, but aside from the poison aspect, they’re no harder to deal with than normal bulls. Nothing that cultivators of their caliber can’t handle, certainly. But that’s only if the cultivator in question can access his qi and isn’t feeling like his meridians are burning him from the inside— which is exactly what the poison does.

The moment the poison enters Ao Huiyu’s bloodstream, she knows it’s over. The poison by itself isn’t deadly, just painful and long-lasting, but facing off against a herd of bulls in that state is nearly impossible, even more so if there’s someone else actively making you lose your balance and distracting you. Nonetheless, it’s actually impressive how he manages to kill one of the bulls even in that state.

She lets it go for a while, just enough to make sure the injuries will be lethal, and then she intervenes. Killing the bulls doesn’t take long after that, since she manages to catch two by surprise and the rest of them are already injured. She makes her way to her master, not even pretending to try to save him. They both know better. She just waits for him to die, watching as he squirms and groans in pain, no doubt from the poison. He glares at her the entire time, mouth opening but no words coming out. He lasts longer than she expects him to.

When he stops breathing, she feels nothing. There’s no catharsis, no sense of relief or satisfaction. Revenge doesn’t taste sweet on her lips, but it doesn’t taste bitter either. Honestly, she’s just tired. She’s been fighting against him for so long that now that it’s over all she can think is how exhausted she feels.

A noise snaps her out of her thoughts, and she whirls around, sword ready, to find Jiang Anying standing there with his own sword out. He’s clearly just arrived, but she has no idea how much he saw. At the very least, he had to have seen how she didn’t even try to save him. Jiang Anying doesn’t say anything, though no for lack of want; he clearly has no idea what or how to say what’s on his mind. She waits for something, anything, but when nothing happens she gets on with the program.

They seal his body and take it back to the sect for a proper burial. She plays the part of somber, grieving disciple with an ease that only years of putting on masks can give her and watches silently as the sect leader puts his soul to rest, publicly lamenting the fact that another of them won’t be able to join them in Ascension even thought they were so close to it. People from all over come to offer her their condolences, and she maintains the facade until she’s locked herself in a room with Mo Anxia and a considerable amount of wine. She’s the only one who knows just how much she had hated that man, and the only one aside from Jiang Anying to be able to guess that maybe it wasn’t an accident after all, but she doesn’t say anything. Mo Anxia never felt any fondness for her Ao-shibo anyhow, and she knows how much he hurt Fu Anchen— she was there to help repair the damage every time.

Jiang Anying finally comes to visit her a few days after the burial. He tells her that he won’t say anything about what he saw, and when questioned why, he just says that he trusts his Fu-shijie’s judgment; she’s never been needlessly cruel before, after all. There has to have been a reason why she didn’t try to save her master and he, of all people, is not going to question it.

(The way to officially succeed Bai Zhan Peak is by defeating the previous Peak Lord in a duel. Jiang Shuzi had won his duel fair and square and within the agreed-upon rules, even if half of the Hui generation threw a fit afterwards over their martial sibling being killed by his disciple. Jiang Anying, for such an easygoing guy, can be ruthlessly efficient when it comes down to it. Fu Anchen never asked him what his master had done to deserve death, but she trusts that her shidi had a reason for it. Jiang Anying is too good of a fighter to kill someone by accident, and nowhere near a good enough liar to convince her that he didn’t realize the blow would be mortal until it was too late.)

Fu Anchen thanks him, and while she never confesses that she intended to kill her master (because that would be treason and grounds to kick her out of the sect), they become closer after that anyway. Fu Anchen, Mo Anxia and Jiang Anying become even closer friends after that.

The Hui generation Ascends, sans the Bai Zhan and Qing Jing Peak Lords, and the An generation take their respective places as lords. In the wake of it, Fu Anchen goes through her master’s house and methodically gets rid of his things. She finds the original notes from his vision that made him summon a child from another world, though not as much information about the summoning or the world she came from. The notes talk about a demon wearing a human child’s face, who trains in Qing Jing Peak and gets casted out when discovered, only to come back later and enact revenge upon his master and destroy Cang Qiong Mountain Sect. A child as cold as an ice river, one note says, which is curious.

And paired with a note that claims that Emma must be a god or the child of one, she also finds the old English —Heavenly Script— papers that he had tried to get her to translate for years, which makes her laugh. He never got very far with them after all. Serves him well.

Once she’s done going through his stuff, she starts to make plans to remodel the house entirely, perhaps even get rid of it and make a new one from scratch. Though something like that would certainly require a meeting with Chao Anjiang to figure out costs and materials, and he’s never been particularly pleasant to deal with. She decides that it can wait for now, since he must be swamped with his own work in the wake of the Ascension.

It ends, softly, with Mo Anxia coming over with drinks to complain about all the work and chaos the last few days have been full of. Fu Anchen receives her happily, also exhausted and more than happy to complain about it over drinks.

#shen jiu's master is a transmigrator au

28 notes · View notes

itsthatlake · 2 months ago

Text

SJ's master is a transmigrator AU

Years pass by.

#shen jiu's master is a transmigrator AU #I'll post more about this au later #svsss #svsss pre canon #svsss fic #svsss au #it isn't stated here but Emma/Fu Anchen does end up changing the fate of the world. I'll expand on another post #Also Fu Anchen and Mo Anxia end up together

28 notes · View notes