Fanfic / Reflected in Shadow

Reflected in Shadow is a The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong For Want Of A Nail fanfic, written by amarielah on Archive of Our Own.

In which Bing-mei did not manage to take Xin Mo from Bing-ge, and therefore couldn't return to Qing Jing Peak in time to prevent Bing-ge from abducting Shen Qingqiu back to the unaltered timeline of Proud Immortal Demon’s Way.

While Shen Qingqiu awaits a rescue that may never come, he’s confronted with a world that is both like and very much unlike the novel he read as Shen Yuan, and must devise a way to keep himself from being horrifically tortured.

It seems that honesty may very well be the best policy.

Of course, it goes a tiny bit complicated from there.

Contains the following tropes

• Ambiguous Gender Identity:
  • Shen Qingqiu's kitsune attendant first appears to be female, only to later reveal the ability to change sex on a whim.
  • Xiao Feifei doesn't look particularly dysphoric about having transmigrated into a woman's body, but still appears as a man in the dreamscape.
• Ambiguously Gay: Bingge views all of his marriages to various wives as transactional and status symbols, doesn't enjoy spending time with any of them. When he has sex with the Little Palace Mistress, he treats it more as a chore he has to appease her. Notably he enjoys his own experimentation in non-traditional masturbation and enjoys sex with the Little Palace Mistress thinking of Shen Yuan.
• Attractiveness Discrimination: Xiao Feifei is rather plain compared to most female cultivators of PIDW and often blends into the background unless they purposely make themself stand out. Xiao Feifei views it as a boon since it meant she never press-ganged into any harems.
• Benevolent Mage Ruler: Shen Qingqiu comes to conclusion that he needs to help Bingge go from a nominally-in charge warlord into a functional and responsible Emperor.
• But Liquor Is Quicker: Shen Qingqiu frets so much about letting Bingge having sex with him, he decides to drink himself stupid to make it less unbearable. Fortunately, the demon king freaks so much about his newfound homosexual romantic leanings he flees the bedroom without doing anything to Shen Qingqiu.
• Canon Character All Along: Xiao Feifei/Maxwell Wu is another version of Luo Binghe.
• Casual Kink: Bingge decides to practice anal sex with the Little Palace Mistress as she's the one most open to experimentation within his harem. She likes it a lot.
• Closet Key: Bingge is utterly floored when he realizes he feels more romantically and sexually attracted to Shen Yuan than he ever was to his wives.
• Commonality Connection: Shen Qingqiu and Xiao Feifei bond over how they were both guitar players in their past lives.
• Crapsack World: Bingge's dimension sucks if you're born a peasant, or female.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Bingge is rather bemused at the concept of marrying for love as opposed it being a financial and socially-based decision to secure one's status and safety.
  • Shen Qingqiu deems Xiao Feifei as plain for her tanned skin due to his internalized colorism.
• Didn't See That Coming: Bingge needs a moment to digest the bombshell about the shizun he abducted from another dimension actually being a transmigrated soul.
• Dream Weaver: Xiao Feifei knows how to use dream magic, which they use to ensure to have conversations with Shen Qingqiu in complete privacy.
• Emasculated Cuckold: Part of Bingge's agenda to seduce Shen Qingqiu is to humiliate and spite the happier Bingmei version. Bingge had used this tactic numerous times by being better than sex than his wives' original love interests, he sees Shen Qingqiu more of the same... However Shen Qingqiu loves Bingmei deeply so it doesn't work.
• Everyone Has Standards: Bingge is not above coercing potential wives into sex, but when Shen Qingqiu gets very drunk to make himself have sex with him, Bingge is so unnerved that he backs off despite him previously trying to pressure Shen Qingqiu into sex.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Bingge is extremely bewildered and frustrated by Shen Qingqiu stubbornly rejecting him as a romantic partner on the grounds he behaves like a dick towards his wives and subjects.
• Evil Weapon: Xin Mo actually aims to possess its wielder and isn't shy about destroying any possible obstacle that would make said wielder throw it away.
• For Want Of A Nail: What if Bingge had successfully abducted Shen Qingqiu and brought him back to the original setting?
• Forced Miscarriage: Qin Wanyue was tricked into taking an abortificent by Sha Hualing, losing her child to prevent her from accumulating power by being the first in the harem to have Luo Binghe's child. Qin Wanyue is understandably distraught.
• Gone Horribly Right:
  • Shen Qingqiu blurts the truth about his transmigration in the hopes Bingge will lose any interest in him for not being the original goods and release him to his beloved. It leads Bingge to grow fascinated with him instead.
  • Bingge first wanted to seduce Shen Qingqiu in order to break his heart by later chasing him out of his harem... only to genuinely fall in love with Shen Qingqiu and start dreading the eventuality of their separation.
• Fountain of Youth: Bingge qi-deviates into a child, which Shen Qingqiu uses as opportunity to have them both travel the country with Bingge posing as his disciple and to enforce platonic bonding.
• Groin Attack: Shen Qingqiu tries to avoid interacting with Bingge's harem because he doesn't want to become an eunuch, and the Little Palace Mistress actively campaigns for him to lose his junk if he's going to stay.
• Honesty Is the Best Policy: Shen Qingqiu really doesn't want to be turned into a human stick and as such opts to tell Bingge he's an entirely different person from his scum villainous shizun. It works, since Bingge develops a fascination for him instead.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: Shen Qingqiu pointedly refuses to trust Bingge believing the latter intends to humiliate and be cruel to him. Remembering the lessons of pre-emptively judging people with Bingmei, he decides to give Bingge a chance... Only for the latter to admit that Shen Qingqiu was completely right to distrust him initially as he did have malicious intentions.
• I Gave My Word: Shen Qingqiu grudgingly concedes that even after blackening and fully becoming a Villain Protagonist, Luo Binghe won't come back on his oath.
• I Hate Past Me: Maxwell Wu, an older version of Luo Binghe from another world, despises Bingge, his younger alternative self, for beheving in the same despicable way he did in his first life.
• Intentional Heartbreaker: Luo Bingge originally intended to seduce Shen Qingqiu into his harem and then once the latter is feeling comfortable and secure, kick him out and dump him into the streets. Shen Qingqiu's initial suspicion of Bingge attempting to seduce him to humiliate was not wrong. Only for Bingge to geniunely grow attached to him.
• King Incognito: Shen Qingqiu and Bingge travel the country after the latter qi-deviates to better understand the state of his kingdom. Bingge slowly learns how he had been a very neglectful ruler.
• Lima Syndrome: Bingge completely panics when he develops romantic feelings towards his newest lust target, Shen Qingqiu from another dimension. Whom he kidnapped.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Bingge grows deeply, desperatly attached to Shen Yuan as the story goes on. He views him as the only person who could ever love him romantically and dreads their possible separation. When Shen Yuan is rescued by Max and Tatsuki, Bingge becomes even more emotionally unstable than before.
• Lysistrata Gambit: Shen Qingqiu bargains with Bingge to willingly have sex with him and spend time with him if he seals Xin Mo long enough to be cleansed from it.
• The Multiverse: Shen Qingqiu and Xiao Feifei compare the timelines of their original homeworld before they died, Shen Qinqiu coming from early 2010s and Xiao Feifei coming from 2020. They quickly realize their world differed.
• No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction: Shen Qingqiu blurting that no matter the obstacles on his path, Bingge will always win due to his "protagonist halo" pisses the demon king something fierce.
• Oh, Crap!: Xiao Feifei and Shen Qingqiu conclude that comparing the current time period to the real world equivalent, they are in the Spring and Autumn Period/Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. With Luo Binghe being destined to become Emperor of China at the end of PIDW, he is possibly the local equivalent either the founder of the Tang Dynasty...or based on his tendencies Genghis Khan.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Luo Binghe running away from the opportunity to papapa the person he really wants to add to his harem? There's something rotten in the realm of Demonkind.
• Power Incontinence: As Bingge's infatuation for Shen Yuan grows, he accidentally pulls the other man into his dreamscape. Cue a lot of awkwardness and horror when it involves sexual fantasies or nightmares about dismemberment.
• Questionable Consent: Bingge would never openly force someone into sex with him, but he's not above tricking or coercing his current lust object. Exhibit A, he accepts to temporarily seal Xin Mo if Shen Qingqiu agrees to a sexual encounter.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Bingge is treated as this In-Universe. Yes, conquering China is pretty ambitious, but China is one country on the planet and that's discounting the various magical dimensions linked with it.
• Spotting the Thread: Shen Qingqiu quickly realizes Xiao Feifei is more than she seems when he sees busk in a corner with a guitar. In Ancient China. She is quickly revealed to be a transmigrator, who recreated the guitar herself.
• Stealth Insult: When Xiao Feifei openly compared Luo Binghe to Genghis Khan, a disguised Bingge asks Shen Qingqiu who is he being compared to. Shen Qingqiu tells him that Genghis Khan was a notable historical figure from their home world. Bingge notes that the comparison isn't positive seeing the latent fear in their eyes.
• Take That!: Shen Qingqiu is horrified that in Xiao Feifei's timeline, Donald Trump became president of the United States. He openly wonders how did an unqualified celebrity become President which Xiao Feifei also asks themself.
• There Is Another: Xiao Feifei, formerly the Taiwanese and Chinese American Maxwell Wu. She and Shen Yuan quickly bond over their shared status of transmigrators.
• Translator Microbes: Shen Qingqiu finds out from Xiao Feifei that their Systems automatically translate everything they hear to their language of origin. Shen Qingqiu hears everything in Modern Mandarin while Xiao Feifei hears it in modern English. When she changed the language options in her System, she had to painfully re-learn Middle Chinese from the ground up.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: After a brief meeting with Ning Yingying, Shen Qingqiu is horrified to realize dual cultivation with a Xin Mo-wielding Bingge literally sucks the intelligence from his wives, as the sword is draining their vitality and higher cognitive functions with it.
• Unreliable Narrator: Xiao Feifei suggests the original Proud Immortal Demon Way lacked in subtlety because it was seen from Luo Binghe's viewpoint exclusively. Shen Qingqiu also is bad at noticing some details.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Wearing the Huli Jing pendant allows Shen Qingqiu to revert to his first life's appearance — something Bingge actually wanted to better differentiate him from his hated shizun.
• Walking the Earth: Xiao Feifei uses her immortality gained from her cultivation to travel the world from Japan to India to the Middle East. Their ultimate goal is to see Rome.
• Worldbuilding: The story explores a lot China in the Two Kingdoms era, and also mentions more cultures.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Shen Qingqiu finally understands he made the story switch from a stallion novel to a danmei (Boys' Love) setting.
• Yandere: As his infatuation grows, Bingge becomes jealous not only of Shen Yuan's love for Bingmei, but of his affection for anyone else. This includes Shen Yuan's family, sect and random people he is friendly with. Bingge is more than willing to dispose of the competition, violently if necessary. Ultimately, he plans to erease Shen Yuan's memories of his loved ones and terrible things Bingge did to him, to get a fresh start in building their relationship.