When he dies as a human stick, Shen Qingqiu is reborn in a strange new world – a world without cultivation – but with all his memories of his previous life. After years of loving support from his new family and the best therapy money can buy, Shen Yuan is able to put the trauma and strange memories of his past life behind him.
Then he dies again, and Shen Yuan is given a choice – pass on to a new turn of the karmic wheel, or return to fix the mistakes of his previous life. He chooses the latter, but no matter how hard he tries to change things, the boy who is destined to destroy the world watches him with resentful eyes as though he also knows the conflict that is to come.
Unfinished Business
is a The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong fanfic on Archive of Our Own by kitsunealyc where Shen Qingqiu was reborn as Shen Yuan after his death under Luo Binghe's hands. After dying a second time, the System gives him the choice to move on to the next life or go back to his first life. When he chooses to go back, it seems that he was not the only one who was reborn.
Unfinished Business contains the following tropes:
- Armor-Piercing Response: When Shen Qingqiu rejects Luo Binghe's suggestion (and advances) to cure him from Without-A-Cure, Luo Binghe immediately assumes that it is because of his demonic heritage and was dumbfounded when the Shen Qingqiu reveals why he is vehemently against it is because he considers Binghe as his student.
- Better as Friends: Luo Binghe refuses to pursue Sha Hualing when he reincarnates, finding that he likes her more as a subordinate than a wife. He also feels the same way with Ning Yingying.
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: This line from Er-ge in Shen Qingqiu’s dream:Er-ge: The whole bottom of the gorge is covered with broken things like that – phones, glasses, go-pros, disciples—
- Burn Baby Burn: After keeping it for months until it got so ratted, Luo Binghe cut off and burned the braid the other Shen Qingqiu did because he does not want a reminder of a life he could have.
- Crazy-Prepared: Shen Qingqiu, in the spades.
- He keeps a knife hidden in his boots, just in case he needs to escape.
- He prepares a bestiary, herbal compendium and a qiankun bag full of various equipment just in case Luo Binghe does fall into the Endless Abyss.
- Before he loses consciousness after being drugged with the Dormant Ember Poppy smoke, he stuffs the same qiankun bag in his sleeve.
- Cruel to Be Kind: Shen Qingqiu brings up Luo Binghe's past sins, with hopes that Luo Binghe would leave him behind to search for Xin Mo. Not only did it fail but it also opened up some of Binghe's emotional wounds.
- Declaration of Protection: Defied. Along with the promise of prioritizing the entire sect over him, Shen Qingqiu makes Yue Qingyuan promise to not to save him if ever the former gets into trouble.
- Demoted to Extra: Enforced. Since Shen Yuan chose Sandbox Mode, the System has not made another appearance after the first chapter.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance:
- Upon seeing the people from Shen Yuan's world through his dreams, Binghe is scandalized with how indecent everyone looks.
- Shen Qingqiu lets out a tirade on how virginity and sexual purity are essentially meaningless and the harm they do to others to Luo Binghe and the Guardian of Xin Mo.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Shen Qingqiu bluntly accuses Luo Binghe from being utterly and unnecessarily brutal towards people he feels have wronged him.
- Genre Savvy:
- Shen Yuan opts for Sandbox mode, not wanting the System to interfere with his actions.
- When Shen Qingqiu started journalling, which also includes the things he remembers from Proud Immortal Demon Way, he makes sure that he wrote everything in a mix of pinyin and English just in case Luo Binghe does decide to ransack Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.
- Giver of Lame Names: Luo Binghe admits that the names he gave to some of the creatures he fought in the Endless Abyss the first time around were rather bad. Shen Qingqiu understands as Luo Binghe was more focused on surviving the Abyss and finds it more practical if main threat and feature of the creature were in the name.
- Hate at First Sight: Downplayed. When Luo Binghe properly meets Shen Yuan's siblings in Shen Yuan's dreams, he immediately disliked Er-ge. It is ambiguous on Da-ge's and Er-ge's end since they are facsimiles of Shen Yuan's memories of them and not their actual selves.
- Identical Stranger: Both Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe noted that Da-ge could pass as Shen Qingqiu's twin.
- Loving Bully: The first timeline has Sha Hualing constantly provoke and harass Liu Mingyan, a behaviour that Luo Binghe identifies as demonic courting. Culture Clash ensues since Liu Mingyan isn't very receptive to this.
- Morton's Fork: While knowing that someone is trying to sabotage the Immortal Alliance Conference, Shen Qingqiu reasons that Cang Qiong Mountain Sect should not take the obvious precautions or withdraw from it as either action could result into a sect war.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Shen Yuan genuinely regrets abusing Luo Binghe, as it meant he turned into the same monster that destroyed his own childhood.
- The more Luo Binghe interacts with people he once dismissed as foes or unimportant, the more he's horrified by how he treated them.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Shen Qingqiu pushes Luo Binghe out of Elder Tian Chui's charge and not only did it ended up getting Shen Qingqiu poisoned with Without-A-Cure, both Qingqiu and Binghe ends up falling into the Endless Abyss.
- No Name Given: As per canon, none of Shen Yuan’s siblings are named.
- Past-Life Memories: Both Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe have their memories from their past lives.
- Platonic Prostitution: After learning why Qi-ge abandoned him from Shang Qinghua and immediately talking to Yue Qingyuan/Qi-ge about it, Shen Qingqiu goes to a brothel to sleep since he could not handle being alone with his thoughts.
- Psychological Projection: Shen Qingqiu admits to Luo Binghe that one of the reasons why he hated him was because he saw his younger self in Binghe.
- Secret-Keeper: Meimei is the only one in Shen Yuan's life who knew about his past life as Shen Jiu.
- Secret Test: Luo Binghe puts Shen Qingqiu into a series of tests to figure out if he is the cruel shizun from the past or the kind shizun he met from another world. The answer is a bit more complicated.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: When given the decision to move on or go back to his first life, Shen Yuan decides to go back and try to change things for the better.
- Switching P.O.V.: The chapters switch from Shen Qingqiu's and Luo Binghe's point of view.
- There Are No Therapists: Subverted. After receiving therapy as Shen Yuan, Shen Qingqiu makes sure that Luo Binghe and some of his other disciples receive the closest equivalent in a Xianxia world.
- Title Drop: Courtesy by the System.System:The ‘Unfinished Business’ feature is a chance for potentially reformed villains to prove their growth by returning them to the scene of their crimes.
- Was It All a Lie?: Luo Binghe was furious when he learned that his kind shizun is the same shizun who tormented him while Shen Qingqiu was devastated when his earnest disciple turns out to be his tormentor.
